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.1 fl H X A . SUTTEE. 



THE 



ROMANCE OF THE AGE ; 



DISCOVERY OF GOLD 



IN CALIFORNIA 



EDWARD E. DUNBAR. 



t ry of Con 

1867 






*y of Wash\<^° 
NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

443 & 445 BROADWAY. 

1867. 



' Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S67, by 
D. APPLETON & CO., 
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Southern District of New York. 



TO THE 

MEMBERS OF THE TRAVELLERS' CLUB 

OF THE 
CITY OF NEW YORK, 

8$fc SUorfc 

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY 

THE AUTHOR. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
Introduction, ...... *7 

Early History of Sutter, * . . • H 

Remarkable Combination op Events attending the Dis- 
covery of Gold, . . . . .26 

Attempt of the Americans to Acquire California — the 

Bear Flag, ..... 29 

The Mexican War — The Americans take Possession 

of California, . . . . .37 

California conquered, . . . . 41 

The Mormons, . . . . . .42 

The End of the Mexican War — Acquisition of Cali- 
fornia, ...... 47 

Establishment of the Pacific Mail Line of Steamers, 48 

The Trip of the First Passengers from New York to 

San Francisco by Steamer, . . . .55 



6 CONTENTS. 

Page 
No Positive Knowledge op the Existence op Gold in 

California, previous to its Discovery, . . 92 

Sutter's Condition in 1848, . . . 103 

Marshall, . . . . . .105 

Location op the Saw-Mill, .... 106 

Discovery op the Gold, . . . 107 \ 

The Discovery of Gold becomes Public, . . 113 

Consequences of the Discovery to Marshall, . . 1180 

Consequences of the Discovery to Sutter, . . 124 



THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; 

OB, 

THE DISCOYEKY OF GOLD IN 
CALIFORNIA. 



Somebody has said j that history is an incor- 
rigible liar. This remark is doubtless trne in a 
greater or less degree,. #s applied to contempora- 
neous history, which, * being written amid the 
excitement of events as they occur, and under 
the influence of selfish motives, passion or pre- 
judice, can only be relied upon for its record of 
facts, that cannot be perverted, and from which 
false conclusions cannot be deduced. 

The discovery of a New World by Columbus 
is one of those great events respecting which 
there can be no mistake. It will forever loom 



8 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

up a towering headland on the shore of Time, 
to mark the progress of the world. But Co- 
lumbus, in his day, was misunderstood, under- 
valued, maligned, and finally he sank into his 
grave a persecuted, heart-broken man. The 
envy, jealousy, ignorance, and selfishness of 
small and depraved minds, all worked together 
to hurl the great discoverer from the lofty posi- 
tion he had attained. It is only by filtering 
facts down through the crevices of ages that 
great truths are realized, and time alone can 
work out a due appreciation of great men and 
the great events they represent. 

Three hundred and seventy-five years have 
elapsed since Columbus discovered America. 
The inspiration, the genius, the heroism of the 
great discoverer are more clearly discerned and 
vastly better appreciated by the present gener- 
ation than they were by his own ; and the mag- 
nitude and importance of the event itself are 
more thoroughly realized as time rolls on and 
develops the momentous results. 

So with the discovery of gold in California. 
We who are living witnesses of the great event 
fail to recognize its importance. In the excite- 



THE DISCOVEEY OF GOLD m CALIFOENIA. \) 

ment of the time, in our familiarity with the 
men and circumstances connected with the dis- 
covery, we, the first greedy, selfish, unreflecting 
participants in the results, pass away, and leave 
it for future generations to appreciate the oc- 
currence and properly estimate its effect on the 
world at large. As yet no attempt to give a 
connected account of the wonderful discovery 
of gold in California, with the remarkable com- 
bination of events attending the occurrence, 
has been made. In my present effort I propose 
simply to rescue certain important facts from 
oblivion, hoping they may prove an instructive, 
entertaining record at the present time, and of 
use to the future historian. Many of the facts 
stated are of my own personal knowledge ; oth- 
ers are gathered from living witnesses, partici- 
pators in the scenes described, and who, a few 
years hence, will have passed from the stage of 
action, thus sealing forever to human investi- 
gation the only reliable source of information so 
interesting and important. 

It is true that the discovery of gold in Cali- 
fornia was accidental. This event had not the 
eclat of national preparation or government 



10 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE ; OR, 

patronage, such, for instance, as attended the de- 
parture of the first expedition down the west- 
ern coast of Africa, under Antonio Goncalves, 
in the time of Henry, Prince of Portugal, or 
that of Columbus from Spain. The great dis- 
covery in California was not the result of any 
foreknowledge, preparation, or plan. Though 
it flashed upon the world like an unexpected, 
unpredicted meteor, the occurrence was, in re- 
ality, the result of a combination of circum- 
stances as remarkable, perhaps, as ever preceded 
or led to any of the great events that mark the 
history of the world. 

No religious, political, or scientific organiza- 
tion could claim any direct agency in the great 
discovery, and none could command its exclu- 
sive benefits. This event, so far beyond the 
reach of any otfe selfish interest, so world-wide 
in its practical results, was at last accidentally 
wrought out by natural means, as humble and 
obscure as those which gave to the world the 
manger-born founder of Christianity. 

Nearly all great discoveries are accidental, 
and sometimes the most trivial circumstances 
lead to the greatest. It is said the principle of 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 11 

gravitation was thumped into the brain of New- 
ton by a pippin, which fell upon the cranium 
of the philosopher as he lay musing under the 
shade of the parent tree. The discovery of 
America, even, by Columbus, was accidental, 
for history says that he sailed to discover a 
nearer passage to the East Indies, and in due 
course he ran against a continent. So Mar- 
shall, the humble employe or associate of the 
pioneer Sutter, while digging a saw-mill race 
away in the remote and wild regions of Cali- 
fornia, discovered the shining particles of life's 
great lubricator. 

SUTTER. 

In the history of the discovery of gold in 
California, no one stands forth so prominent as 
John A. Suttee. This distinguished pioneer 
is, in reality, the hero of the grandest history 
of modern times. 

Born of Swiss parents in Baden, February 
28th, 1803, reared and educated in that city, 
Sutter entered the military service of France 
as captain, where he remained until thirty years 



12 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OK, 

of age. At this period, yielding to his pioneer 
impulses, the young adventurer embarked for 
New York, where he arrived July, 1834. 

Captain Sutter's object in coming to the 
United States was to select a locality and pre- 
pare the way for a colony of Swiss — his coun- 
trymen. He at once proceeded to the unex- 
plored territory west of the Mississippi, and 
selected the region of St. Charles, in Missouri, 
as a proper location for his proposed colony. 
But this enterprise was ultimately abandoned, 
from the fact that the vessel contain in 2; the ef- 
fects upon which Sutter relied to accomplish 
his colonizing project, was sunk in the Missis- 
sippi, and proved a total loss. 

After sojourning for a time in St. Charles, 
where he declared his intention to become an 
American citizen, Captain Sutter made a jour- 
ney of exploration to New Mexico, and returned 
to Missouri in 1836. When in New Mexico, he 
met with hunters and trappers who had trav- 
ersed Upper California, and who described to 
him the beautiful sunlit valleys, verdure-covered 
hills, and magnificent mountains of that re- 
markable land. These accounts so charmed Sut- 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 13 

tor, that lie resolved to make California the field 
of his future adventures. 

The only way of reaching the Pacific coast 
at this period was to accompany the trapping 
expeditions of the American and English fur 
companies. In the month of March, 1838, 
Sutter joined Captain Tripp, of the American 
Fur Company, and travelled with his party to 
their rendezvous in the Bocky Mountains. 
From thence, with six horsemen, he crossed the 
mountains, and after encountering the inevita- 
ble hardships and dangers of the journey, the 
party arrived at Fort Vancouver. 

There was then no land route from Oregon 
to California that could he travelled in winter ; 
and as there was a vessel belonging to the 
Hudson Bay Company ready to sail for the 
Sandwich Islands, Sutter took passage in this 
vessel hoping to find a conveyance to California 
from Honolulu. 

On reaching the Sandwich Islands he found 
no available means of passage to California, and 
after sojourning there five months, he concluded 
to ship as supercargo on board an English ves- 
sel, chartered by an American, and bound for 



14 



Sitka. Having disposed of the cargo at Sitka, 
Sutter sailed, according to instructions, down 
the Pacific coast. Encountering heavy gales, 
the vessel was driven into the Bay of San Fran- 
cisco in a distressed condition. They came to 
anchor opposite Yerba Buena, now San Fran- 
cisco, on the 2d of July, 1839. 

The vessel was soon boarded by an officer, 
who ordered the captain to leave for Monterey, 
the port of entry, ninety miles south. Permis- 
sion was obtained to remain forty-eight hours 
for supplies. On arriving in Monterey, Sutter, 
having dispatched the vessel back to her owners 
in the Sandwich Islands, waited upon Alvarado, 
the Mexican governor, and communicated to 
him his desire to occupy and colonize a section 
of country on the Sacramento River. 

The governor warmly approved of this plan, 
as he was desirous that the Sacramento country, 
inhabited only by wild and hostile Indians, 
should be subdued and settled. Alvarado 
readily gave Sutter a passport, with power to 
explore and occupy any territory he should think 
suitable for his colony, and stated that if he 
returned within one year, he should be ac- 



THE DISCO VEEY OF GOLD IN CALIFOENIA. 15 

knowledged as a citizen, and receive a grant for 
such lands as lie might solicit. 

Captain Sutter, thus empowered, returned 
to Yerba Buena, a settlement then containing 
scarcely fifty inhabitants. He chartered a 
schooner and several small boats of the firm of 
Leese, Spear & Hinckly, three American tra- 
ders who had been located at this point several 
years. Jacob P. Leese was the first American 
settler in Yerba Buena. He settled in that 
place in 1833, having emigrated from Pennsyl- 
vania ; and as a true and enterprising pioneer, 
lie stands prominent in the history of California 
at that period. 

Captain Sutter could find no one at Yerba 
Buena who had ever seen the Sacramento River, 
or who could guide him to its mouth. They 
only knew that a large stream emptied into one 
of the connecting bays lying in a northerly di- 
rection. Sutter resolved, however, to start with 
his company, consisting of ten whites — frontiers- 
men of American, Irish, and German birth — 
and eight Kanakas given to him by the King 
of the Sandwich Islands. Passing through San 
Francisco and Suisun Bays, they found, after 



16 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

eight days' search, the mouth of the Sacra- 
mento. Ascending this river to a point ten 
miles below the present site of Sacramento City, 
they encountered a party of two hundred Indian 
warriors, who exhibited every mark of hostility. 
Fortunately, several of these Indians understood 
Spanish, and Captain Sutter soon soothed them 
with assurances that there were no Mexicans — 
against whom they were particularly exasper- 
ated and hostile — in his party. He explained 
to them that he came to settle in their country 
and trade ; exhibited his agricultural imple- 
ments and commodities of traffic, which he had 
prepared for the purpose, and set forth the ad- 
vantages of a treaty. Pleased with these kindly 
and peaceful demonstrations, the Indians be- 
came pacified, and the expedition was permitted 
to proceed, accompanied by the two Indians who 
spoke Spanish, and who guided them to the 
mouth of the Feather River. 

Having ascended this river some distance, 
several of the party became alarmed at the sur- 
rounding dangers, and insisted on returning. 
Sutter consented to return to the mouth of the 
American River, where, on the 16th of August, 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 17 

1839, he caused his effects to be landed on 
the south bank, a short distance from its junc- 
tion with the Sacramento, where the city of 
Sacramento now stands. Having landed his 
effects, Captain Sutter informed his party, that 
any feeling disaffected were at liberty to leave,- 
he being resolved to remain at all hazards. But 
three of the party — whitest-determined to go, 
and being put in possession of the schooner, to 
be returned to her owners at Yerba Buena, they 
left on that day. Captain Sutter fixed upon 
this locality as his permanent headquarters, and 
he soon commenced to build the fort, afterward 
famous as Sutter's Fort. 

This, in brief, is the history of Captain Sut- 
ter up to the period when he made his final 
lodgment in California. We find him located 
at last in the region of country for which the 
aspirations of years of youth and manhood had 
caused him to search, and which iive years of 
actual wandering had enabled him to reach. 
Our interest in the pioneer increases. Little 
did Sutter think, when he located in that wild, 
remote region, that he was to be one of the 
main instruments in suddenly creating a mag- 



18 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE ; OR, 

nificent empire. When we reflect on the in- 
numerable hardships and dangers through which 
Sutter must have passed, by land and by sea, 
during those years of determined effort to locate 
in the Sacramento country — a region far, far 
removed from civilization, and as little known, 
perhaps, as any on the face of the earth — we are 
almost forced to believe that he was moved by 
an inspiration of great things to come. 

There is something extravagantly romantic 
as well as ludicrous in the situation of this blue- 
eyed Swiss, when he located in the Sacramento 
valley. His companions were six wandering 
whites, of various nationalities, and eight Ka- 
nakas, of whom, the latter, ever faithful, con- 
stituted what he called his body-guard. These 
fourteen companions made up his colony, and 
his army, by means of which he was to hold his 
ground, and subdue and colonize a district of 
country entirely unknown, and inhabited only by 
wild and roving bands of hostile Indians. This 
portion of Upper California, though fair to look 
upon, was peculiarly solitary and uninviting in 
its isolation and remoteness from civilization. 
There was not even one of those cattle-ranches, 



THE DISCOVERY OP GOLD LN CALIFORNIA. 19 

which dotted the coast at long intervals, nearer 
to Sutter's locality than Suisun and Martinez, 
below the mouth of the Sacramento. 

The Indians of the Sacramento were known 
as " Diggers." The efforts of the Jesuit Fa- 
thers, so extensive on this continent, and so bene- 
ficial to the wild Indians, wherever missions 
were established among them, never reached 
the wretched aborigines of the Sacramento 
country. The valley of the Sacramento had 
not yet become the pathway of emigrants from 
the East, and no civilized human being lived in 
this primitive and solitary region, or roamed 
over it, if we except a few trappers of the Hud- 
son Bay Company. 

Every human heart has its own secret his- 
tory. None but the true pioneer — the loyal 
sympathizer with Nature — can conceive what 
Captain Sutter saw inviting at that time in this 
remote and secluded spot, or what was his lead- 
ing motive in locating there to establish, it 
would seem, a frontier community of his owm. 
It was no doubt from a pure love of this kind 
of life, an irrepressible desire to lead the van of 
civilization. It would appear that even at this 



20 



early period, the bright glimmering of the star 
of empire in the western heavens revealed 
itself to his pioneer spirit, which, catching the 
inspiration, impelled him on and on toward the 
setting snn, until he reached the utmost confines 
of the Western Hemisphere, where he cast his 
lot, to prepare the way for and await civiliza- 
tion. Its first footsteps had not been seen or 
heard when Sutter located there. Years passed, 
and a few came stealing over the border ; then 
more ; then a firm, solid tramp of masses was 
heard ; and then rushed headlong a human 
deluge, that overwhelmed our bold pioneer, 
and it may be said that he has been whirling 
in its vortex ever since. 

Born and reared in the atmosphere of roy- 
alty and refined society in Europe, with a lib- 
eral military education, gentle and polished 
manners, and of unbounded liberality of heart, 
we find Captain Sutter successfully planting 
his little colony in the secluded and hostile 
Sacramento valley. 

At first this little colony encountered serious 
difficulties with the Indians, and the increase 
of the settlement was slow. The tide of Amer- 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD m CALIFORNIA. 21 

ican emigration was entirely to Oregon, from 
whence a few stragglers occasionally found their 
way to Sutter's colony. In the fall of 1839 
there was an accession of eight white men, 
and in August, 1840, five of those who had 
crossed the Bocky Mountains with Sutter, and 
whom he had left in Oregon, joined him. 
During the fall of this year the Mokelumne 
Indians, with other tribes, became so trouble- 
some that Sutter and his little band waged open 
warfare against them, and, after a severe but 
short campaign, they were beaten on every side 
and forced to keep the peace. Other bands of 
Indians organized many secret expeditions to 
destroy the colony, but by force and strict vigi- 
lance these machinations were finally frustra- 
ted, and Sutter soon conquered the entire Sa- 
cramento and part of the San Joaquin valley, 
bringing into willing subjection many of those 
who had been his fiercest enemies. In due 
time he taught them a certain degree of civili- 
zation. He established a police among them- 
selves ; of some he formed a body of uniformed 
soldiers, and many of these became good artil- 
lerists and riflemen. Others were required to 



22 

learn several of the mechanical trades, and a 
large number were made to cultivate the soil, 
herd cattle, etc., etc. In due time they built 
what afterward became famous as Sutter's Fort. 
Several cannon were mounted, and an abun- 
dant supply of small-arms and ammunition was 
acquired. In the subsequent military history 
of Upper California, Sutter and his Indians be- 
came a power in the land. 

In course of time, progress and prosperity 
attended the colony. Sutter sent hides to Yerba 
Buena, furnished the Hudson Bay Company 
and wandering trappers with supplies, receiv- 
ing in exchange their furs. Emigrants who 
sought work were employed as mechanics or 
tillers of the soil. 

In June, 1841, Sutter visited Monterey, the 
capital of the province, where he was declared 
a Mexican citizen, and received from Governor 
Alvarado a grant of the land upon which he had 
located — eleven leagues — under the title of 
" K~ew Helvetia." Alvarado also gave him a 
commission as the representante del gdbierno en 
las f router as del norte, y encargado de lajusti- 
cia. 




UTTERS F R T 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 23 

Returning to his colony, Sutter was shortly 
after visited by Captain Ringgold, of the United 
States Exploring Expedition, under Commander 
Wilkes. About the same time Mr. Alexander 
Rotchoff, Governor of the Russian Possessions, 
known as " Ross & Bodega," situated on the 
coast near the entrance of San Francisco Bay, 
visited Sutter and offered to sell him all those 
possessions. The negotiation was finally con- 
cluded, and Sutter came into possession of all 
the real and personal property, in the latter of 
which were two thousand cattle, one thousand 
horses, fifty mules, and two thousand five hun- 
dred sheep. This increase of Sutter's resources, 
together with the natural increase of his stock 
and other property at New Helvetia, enabled 
him the more rapidly to advance his settlement 
and improvements. 

In the year 1844 Sutter petitioned Governor 
Manuel Micheltorena for the grant or purchase 
of the sohra?ite y or surplus over the first eleven 
leagues of the land within the bounds of the 
survey accompanying the Alvarado grant. In 
February, 1845, Micheltorena complied with Sut- 
ter's petition, partly on account of military ser- 



24 

vices rendered the State in suppressing the Cas- 
tro rebellion. 

About this period, (1844) small bodies of em- 
igrants began to find their way to California 
direct from the States, striking Sutter's Fort, 
the first settlement after crossing the mountains. 
Year by year these emigrants increased in num- 
bers, till the discovery of gold, when they were 
counted by thousands and tens of thousands. 

It is here that the value of Sutter's settle- 
ment, and the generous qualities of the man, 
became strikingly apparent. ~No weary, travel- 
worn and destitute emigrant ever reached Sut- 
ter's Fort, who was not supplied with every 
necessary, and sent on his way rejoicing. The 
cry of distress never came over the mountains 
from any party of emigrants, however ]arge, 
but what it received the immediate attention 
of the noble-hearted Sutter. Cattle, in droves, 
with the necessary number of horses and In- 
dians, were at once dispatched to supply the 
broken-down, starving emigrants, and bring 
them safely in. 

The following incident was related to me by 
Sutter. It exhibits something of the terrible 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 25 

hardships to which emigrants to the Pacific 
shores were then exposed. 

A solitary emigrant was just able to reach Sut- 
ter's Fort, and report his companions some dis- 
tance back in the desert country, dying of starva- 
tion. Sutter immediately caused a number of 
his best mules to be packed with supplies, and 
dispatched under the guidance of the messenger 
and two Indians. They arrived among the 
starving emigrants in time to save most of them, 
but just as they were about to move forward, 
another party of famishing emigrants unex- 
pectedly arrived. In their frenzy they seized 
upon all that remained of the supplies sent by 
Sutter, killed his mules and ate them ; then 
they killed the two Indians and ate them. Said 
Sutter with much feeling: "They eat my fine 
Indians all up." After eating numbers of their 
companions as they fell exhausted and lifeless, 
the remaining portion of these wretched end 
grants finally arrived at Sutter's Fort, where 
they were supplied with all the necessaries of 
life, and maintained until their health and 
strength were restored. Year after year Sutter 
exercised this munificent liberality and kind- 



26 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OE, 

ness, never looking for or accepting any re- 
ward. 



REMAEKABLE COMBINATION OF EVENTS AT- 
TENDING THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD. 

We will now leave Sutter in his adventurous, 
prosperous career, to set forth that remarkable 
combination of events preceding the discovery 
of gold in California, and which has a very im- 
portant bearing on the realization of the fact 
itself. 

Mankind, under the influence of supers ti 
tious vagaries, are prone to attribute remarkable 
coincidences and occurrences they do not com- 
prehend to a supernatural agency. In the 
present instance it would add so much to the 
piquancy and romantic interest of the history, 
by casting upon it the fitful glimmer of super- 
naturalism, that the historian is sorely tempted 
to be less clear in his explanation of the natural 
causes of the events chronicled. 

It must be acknowledged that the precise 
working of events in cycles, all tending with 
undeviating precision to the discovery of gold 



THE DISCOVERT OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 27 

in California, and the rapid development of its 
results, is remarkable and in the highest degree 
interesting. The superstitious would charac- 
terize this — to use the mild term of the age — 
as a special providence, which means that Na- 
ture will go out of her way in all things, from 
serving an old lady with a cup of tea, to the 
creation or destruction of an empire. 

This superstitious belief drags God and His 
laws down to the fallible standard of sinful man. 
It affords the excuse for ten great crimes where 
it incites to one small virtue. It underlies all 
the prevailing systems of religion, and it en- 
genders the several degrees of fanaticism alike 
in Thug, Dervish, Jesuit, and Puritan ; and so 
long as it rules the world as at present, the pure 
and simple religion of Jesus Christ can never 
attain. 

Omnipotent Power, in administering the 
whole law, which is the law of progressive 
good, cannot deviate to the right hand or to 
the left. This makes providences general, and 
not special, as applied by the superstitious 
masses. 

At the time gold was discovered in Califor- 



28 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

nia, that country was practically a terra incog- 
nita to the whole world. It must be said, 
however, that the hour had come. Events were 
big in the womb of time. The greedy eye of 
the commercial world was beginning to turn 
toward that fair land. Ocean steam-navigation 
and the electric telegraph had just become es- 
tablished successes, and there was that natural 
tendency to explore for new fields which in- 
creased populations and augmented facilities of 
great importance and variety would naturally 
induce, particularly in the American and Eng- 
lish nations. 

Subsequent to 1844, the tendency of events 
in California was such as to render the posses- 
sion of that territory a political necessity to the 
United States. Our omnipresent rival, Eng- 
land, was looking to that coast with wistful 
eyes. It was known that Mexico was about to 
give one McNamara, an Irish Catholic priest, 
immense land grants, such as would include the 
best portions of Upper California ; and these 
land grants MoNamara had stipulated to place 
under a British protectorate. 

At this period (1844) there were located in 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 29 

California but few Americans. Those most 
prominent were Thomas O. Larkin, in Monterey ; 
Leese, Spear & Hinckley, in Yerba Buena ; 
George Yount, in Sonoma ; and Bidwell, Read- 
ing & Hensly, in other parts of the territory. 
But now others came straggling into the coun- 
try from Oregon and from over the Sierra 
Nevada, while others landed on the coast. 
Early in 1846, the Americans in California 
numbered about 200, mostly able-bodied men, 
and who in their activity, enterprise, and au- 
dacity, constituted quite a formidable element 
in this sparsely inhabited region. The popu- 
lation of California at this time was 6,000 Mexi- 
cans and 200,000 Indians. 



ATTEMPT OF THE AMERICANS TO ACQUIRE 
CALIFORNIA.— THE BEAR FLAG. 

We now come to a period in the history of 
California that has never been made clear, and 
respecting which there are conflicting state- 
ments and opinions. The following facts were 
obtained by careful inquiry of intelligent parties 
who lived in California during the period men- 



30 THE KOMANCE OF THE AGE ; OK, 

tioned, and who participated in the scenes nar- 
rated. 

The native Californians appear to have 
entertained no very strong affection for their 
own government, or rather, they felt that under 
the influences at work they would inevitahly, 
and at no distant period, become a dismembered 
branch of the Mexican nation ; and the matter 
was finally narrowed down to this contested 
point, namely, whether this state surgery should 
be performed by Americans or English, the real 
struggle being between these two nationalities. 

In the northern part of the territory, such 
native Californians as the Yallejos, Castros, 
etc., with the old American settlers, Leese, Lar- 
kin, and others, sympathized with the United 
States, and desired annexation to the American 
republic. In the south, Pio Pico, then governor 
of the territory, and other prominent native 
Californians, with James Alexander Forbes, the 
English consul, who settled in Santa Clara in 
1828, were exerting themselves to bring the 
country under English domination by means of 
the McNamara papers, or other pretexts. 

This was the state of affairs for two or three 



THE DISCOVEEY OF GOLD EN" CALIFORNIA. 31 

years previous to the Mexican War. For some 
months before the news that hostilities between 
the United States and Mexico had commenced 
reached California, the belief that such an event 
would certainly occur, was universal throughout 
the territory. This quickened the impulse 
all parties, and stimulated the two rivals — the 
American and English — in their efforts to be 
the first to obtain a permanent hold of the 
country. 

The United States Government had sent 
Colonel Fremont to the Pacific on an explor- 
ing expedition. Colonel Fremont had passed 
through California, and was on his way to Ore- 
gon, when, in March, 1S16, Lieutenant Gilles- 
pie, of the United States marine service, was 
sent from Washington with dispatches to ( 
nel Fremont. Lieutenant Gillespie went across 
Mexico to Mazatlan, and from thence by sea to 
California. He finally overtook Fremont early 
in June, 1846, a short distance on the road to 
Oregon, and communicated to him the purport 
of his dispatches, they having been committed 
to memory and the papers destroyed before he 
entered Mexico. \Yhat these instructions au- 



32 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

thorized Colonel Fremont to do has never been 
promulgated, but it is said they directed him to 
remain in California, and hold himself in readi- 
ness to cooperate with the United States fleet, 
in case war with Mexico should occur. 

Fremont immediately returned to Califor- 
nia, and camped a short time on Feather Eiver, 
and then took up his headquarters at Sutter's 
Fort. A few days after, on Sunday, June 
14th, 1846, a party of fourteen Americans, un- 
der no apparent command, appeared in Sonoma, 
captured the place, raised the Bear flag, pro- 
claimed the independence of California, and 
carried off to Fremont's quarters as prisoners 
four prominent citizens, namely, the two Valle- 
jos, J. P. Leese, and Colonel Prudhon. On 
the consummation of these achievements, one 
Merritt was elected captain. 

This was a rough party of revolutionists, 
and the manner in which they improvised the 
famous Bear flag, shows upon what slender 
means nations and kingdoms are sometimes 
started. From an estimable old lady they ob- 
tained a fragmentary portion of her white skirt, 
on which they painted what was intended to 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 33 

represent a grizzly bear, but not being artistic 
in their work, it was difficult to determine wliat 
kind of an animal they bad selected as the em- 
blem of tbe new nationality ; so the Mexicans, 
with their usual happy faculty on such occa- 
sions, called it the " Bandera Colchis" or " Hog 
Flag." This flag now ornaments the rooms of 
the Pioneer Society in San Francisco. 

On the 18th of June, 1846, William B. Ide, 
a native of New England, who had emigrated 
to California the year previous, issued a procla- 
mation as commander-in-chief of the fortress 
of Sonoma. This proclamation declared the 
purpose to overthrow the existing government, 
and establish in its place the republican form. 
The proclamation particularly requested the 
people to remain at peace, and follow their 
usual occupations, while the change that was to 
bring every imaginable blessing to the country 
took place. 

General Castro now proposed to attack the 
feebly-manned post at Sonoma, but he was frus- 
trated by a rapid movement of Fremont, who, 
on the 4th of July, 1846, called a meeting of 

Americans at Sonoma ; and this assembly, act- 
2* 



34: THE EOMANCE OF THE AGE ; OE, 

ing under his advice, proclaimed the independ- 
ence of the country, appointed Fremont Gov- 
ernor, and declared war against Mexico. 

During these proceedings at Sonoma, a flag 
with one star floated over the headquarters of 
Fremont at Sutter's Fort. The meaning of this 
lone-star flag no one seems to have understood, 
nor, in fact, does it appear to be known to this 
day precisely what end the several parties en- 
gaged in these military movements (under the 
direction, it was supposed, of Fremont) had in 
view. The people of Northern California ap- 
peared at first to take no very decided stand 
against the raising of the Bear flag, and the 
proclamation of the independence of California. 
They were very much incensed, however, by 
the capture and imprisonment of four of their 
most prominent citizens; and they allege that 
when Colonel Fremont appeared in the country 
and took a leading part, his course was so indis- 
creet as to create an antagonism to American 
interests, and provoke the warlike opposition 
which subsequently manifested itself among the 
native inhabitants, when otherwise there would 
have been only friendship. 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 35 

This allegation would appear to be sustained 
from the fact that Governor Pio Pico, the head 
of the an ti- American party in Southern Cali- 
fornia, speedily and adroitly seized upon the 
act of the Americans in capturing Sonoma, to 
inflame the minds of the people against for- 
eigners of the United States of America, as 
appears by the following extract from a com- 
munication addressed by Governor Pico to 
Thomas O. Larkin, Esq., United States consul, 
and dated Santa Barbara, June 29, 1846 : 

" The undersigned, constitutional Governor 
of the Department of the Californias, has the 
deep mortification to make known to Mr. 
Thomas O. Larkin, consul of the United States 
of North America, that he has been greatly 
surprised in being notified by official communi- 
cations of the general commandancia of this 
Department, and the prefectura of the second 
district, that a multitude of foreigners of the 
United States of America have invaded that 
frontier, taken possession of the fortified town 
of Sonoma, treacherously making prisoners of 
the military commandante, Don Mariano G. 
Vallejo, Lieut.-Colonel Victor Prudhon, Captain 



36 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OK, 

Salvador Vallejo, and Mr. Jacob P. Leese ; and 
likewise have stolen the property of these indi- 
viduals. 

" The undersigned can do no less than make 
known to the consul of the United States that 
acts so alarming have caused very great grief. 

" Until the present the department govern- 
or is wanting the least positive information 
that would give him to understand of a decla- 
ration of war between the United States and 
Mexico ; and, without such information, he 
judges the course pursued at Sonoma the most 
atrocious and infamous that can be imagined, 
so much so that the like is not seen among 
barbarians." 

It was believed by many in California that 
those directing the movements of the Bear-nag 
party intended to establish an independent 
republic. 

I simply state these historical facts, without 
entering into further details, or giving any opin- 
ion as to the merits of the controversy, which 
at one time was carried on with great bitterness. 
It may be that the action of the censured party 
was dictated by a desire to secure the country 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 37 

to the United States before England could raise 
any claim. 



THE MEXICAN WAR.— THE AMERICANS TAKE 
POSSESSION OF CALIFORNIA. 

Fending these movements, and just as Fre- 
mont, with his company, had started for the 
coast to confront Castro, and act on the aggres- 
sive generally, he was suddenly brought to a stand 
by the astounding intelligence that Commodore 
Sloat had arrived at Monterey, and that on the 
7th of July, 1846, he had raised the American 
flag and taken possession of the place ; also, 
that, by command of Commodore Sloat, Com- 
mander Montgomery, of the United States sloop- 
of-war Portsmouth, then lying in San Francisco 
Bay, had, on the 8th of July, taken possession 
of Yerba Buena, and raised the American flag 
on the plaza. This of course settled the busi- 
ness for all parties. The Mexican flag and the 
Bear flag were lowered, and in due time, nolens 
volens, all acquiesced in the flying of the Stars 
and Stripes. 

The accounts, even among Californians, re- 



38 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

spectiug the date on which the American flag 
was raised at Monterey, the circumstances at- 
tending this important event, and the degree 
of responsibility assumed by Commodore Sloat, 
are somewhat conflicting. 

By the kindness of L. W. Sloat, Jr., Esq., 
who was on board the Savannah, commanded 
by his father, I have been furnished with the 
following extracts from the ship's log : 

" U. S. Frigate Savannah, Commodore Sloat. | 

Mazatlan, Mexico, May 31, 1846. f 

" Received report of General Taylor's victory over 
the Mexicans on the 8th and 9th of May, on the north 
bank of the Rio Bravo. 

" June 5th. News of General Taylor's victories con- 
firmed — of his taking possession of Matamoras the 18th 
of May, received. 

"June 7th. Lieutenant Trapin performed divine 
service. News received of the blockade of Vera Cruz 
by the American squadron. At 2 p. m. got under way 
for Monterey, California. 

" July 1st. Stood into the harbor of Monterey, and 
came to anchor at 4 p. m. in front of the town, about 
one-quarter of a mile from the fort, which bore by com- 
pass N. W. The captain of the port, accompanied by 
Mr. Hartwell, attached to the Custom-House, called. 
Cyane and Levant in port. 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD m CALIFORNIA. 39 

" July 2d. Thomas O. Larkin, Esq., United States 
consul, made a long call, and on leaving was saluted 
with nine guns. 

" July 3d. Called upon the authorities. 

"July 4th. Ship dressed and salutes fired. 

"July 5th. Lieutenant Trapin performed divine 
service. 

"July 6th. Mr. Larkin spent the day on board pre- 
j^aring proclamations, etc., for taking possession of 
California to-morrow. 

" July 7th. Seven a. m., landing forces. Took pos- 
session ; hoisted flag. 

"July 15th. United States frigate Congress, Commo- 
dore Stockton, arrived from Honolulu. Whilst in the 
offing, saluted the flag with thirteen guns, which was 
returned. K. M. Price and Dr. Gilchrist appointed 
alcaldes of Monterey. 

" July 27th. Gave up the command of the squadron 
to Commodore Stockton to-day, and turned over to him 
the papers appertaining thereto. 

"July 29th. Sailed in Levant for Mazatlan and 
Panama." 

These extracts from Commodore Sloat's log 
settle all questions as to dates, and they prove 
the fact that, though the commodore had heard 
of the commencement of hostilities on the Rio 
Grande, he sailed from Mazatlan for California, 



40 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

took possession of the country, and raised the 
American flag on his own responsibility. 

These decisive steps on the part of Commo- 
dore Sloat were not taken a moment too soon, 
as on the 14th of July the British man-of-war 
Collingwood, Sir George Seymour command- 
ing, arrived at Monterey, and, to his utter 
amazement, he saw the American flag flying 
from the Mexican fort, and the town in posses- 
sion of the Americans. 

Sir George Seymour informed Commodore 
Sloat that he could salute his ship, but he could 
not salute the American flag ashore, for he had 
come to do the same thing; that is, he had 
come to take possession of that portion of the 
country and raise the English flag. This was 
to have been done on the strength of the MoNa- 
mara papers, which the English commander 
believed had been executed and delivered. It 
is said these papers subsequently fell into the 
hands of one of the United States army officers 
in Southern California. 



THE DISCOVERT OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 41 

CALIFORNIA CONQUERED. 

Commodore Stockton, on assuming command 
of the squadron, immediately instituted bold 
and vigorous measures for the subjugation of the 
territory. All his available force for land oper- 
ations was three hundred and fifty men — sailors 
and marines. But so rapid and skilful were 
Stockton's movements, and so efficient was the 
cooperation of Fremont with his small troop, 
that California was effectually conquered in 
January, 1847. 

During all this period the people of the 
United States were ignorant of what was trans- 
piring in California, and vice versa. But the 
action of Commodore Sloat in raising the 
American flag in California, and that of Com- 
modore Stockton in conquering the territory, 
did but anticipate the wishes of the United 
States Government, which had in June, 1846, 
dispatched General Kearney across the country 
from Fort Leavenworth, at the head of sixteen 
hundred men, with orders to conquer California, 
and when conquered, to assume the governor- 
ship of the territory. General Kearney arrived 



42 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE ; OR, 

in California via San Pasqual with greatly di- 
minished forces, December, 1846, a few weeks 
before active military operations in that region 
ceased. 

The United States Government had also 
dispatched a regiment of volunteers from New 
York via Cape Horn, under Colonel J. D. Ste- 
venson, September, 1846. This regiment ar- 
rived in San Francisco, March, 1847, and in 
detached bodies it performed garrison duty 
throughout the conquered territory, until peace 
was declared. 

THE MORMONS. 

The Mormon movement should here be ex- 
plained, as furnishing a singular coincidence in 
connection with affairs in California at this pe- 
riod, not omitting the serio-comic end of Mor- 
mon hopes brought about by the war with 
Mexico. 

The exodus of the Mormons from Nauvoo 
took place in the early part of 1846. It is a 
well-known fact that this singular people had 
become so obnoxious in the "West, that their 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD DT CALIFORNIA. 43 

presence in any great numbers was not tolera- 
ted. In February, 1846, sixteen hundred men, 
women, and children, constituting the main 
body of the sect inhabiting Nauvoo City, started 
with their movable effects for the Pacific, sha- 
king the dust from their feet, and hurling anath- 
emas loud and deep against the people and in- 
stitutions of the United States. Those who 
remained in ISTauvoo were soon forced to follow 
the main body, and the city with its temple 
finally became a heap of ruins. The destina- 
tion of the polygamists was California, some 
part of which territory, especially that border- 
ing on San Francisco Bay, they proposed to 
acquire from Mexico. 

Simultaneously with the movement of the 
main body of the Mormons from Nauvoo City, 
some two hundred of the sect, including several 
of their prominent leaders, purchased the ship 
Brooklyn, and sailed from New York, January, 
1846, for San Francisco Bay, where they ar- 
rived July 31st, but twenty-three days after 
Commander Montgomery had taken possession 
of the place and raised the American flag. 

It was a fine, brilliant California day, that 



44 THE EOMANCE OF THE AGE ; OR, 

on which the Mormon-freighted ship Brooklyn 
passed through the Golden Gate and entered 
San Francisco Bay. The long-wished-for haven 
was gained at last. What a magnificent har- 
bor ! What a fine country ! And all that vir- 
gin territory awaiting in silence and peace the 
coming of the latter-day saints. These, as may 
be imagined, weary of their long and tedious 
voyage, were eager to set foot on the promised 
land flowing with milk and honey, where, free 
from persecution, like the Pilgrims of old, they 
could worship God after their own fashion, and 
where polygamous institutions were to rise in 
all their loveliness, beauty, and grandeur. 

The Brooklyn sailed majestically into the 
bay, her decks crowded with impatient human 
beings, when, on coming opposite the town, one 
of the leaders was observed to shade his eyes 
and gaze anxiously ashore. Suddenly his coun- 
tenance became ghastly, and, pointing to our 
national emblem, which floated over the plaza 
in all its beauty and glory, he exclaimed, " By 
God! there is that damned American flag ! " 

These Mormons had left the United States 
several months before the commencement of the 



THE DISCOYEEY OF GOLD W CALIFORNIA. 45 

war with Mexico, and the sight of our nag 
floating over the plaza of Yerba Buena was the 
first intimation they had of that event and its 
consequences. An express was immediately 
sent off to meet the main body of Mormons 
coming overland. This Mormon host had pur- 
sued their toilsome march westward to the 20th 
July, 1846, when, from the Wasatch Moun- 
tains, they beheld the placid waters of Salt 
Lake, gilded by the beams of the setting sun. 
On the 24th, just one week previous to the ar- 
rival of the Brooklyn in San Francisco Bay, 
the entire body of Mormons, with the High 
Council and the President, reached the valley 
and camped to recruit their exhausted strength. 
Here they were met by the express from the 
Brooklyn, with the astounding intelligence that 
the Americans had taken possession of Cali- 
fornia, and that the project of finding a resting- 
place on the Pacific shore must be abandoned. 
After a brief deliberation, they determined to 
remain where they were. This conclusion was 
the more readily reached, as the land was good, 
and the isolated location offered great advan- 
tages. Planting commenced immediately, and 



4:6 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OK, 

measures were at once taken to build their seat 
of empire, now known as Salt Lake City. This 
explains the settlement of the Mormons in 
Utah. 

But this people did not long remain unmo- 
lested in their new locality, for they were speed- 
ily called upon and compelled by the United 
States Government to furnish a battalion to 
serve in California. Under officers of the 
United States Army, this battalion was marched 
forthwith to that territory, and it must be said 
that it performed good and faithful service until 
the end of the war. 

The Brooklyn party, disappointed and dis- 
pirited, soon quarrelled amoDg themselves, and 
finally dispersed. Some remained in Yerba 
B aen a, while others settled in the Sacramento 
Valley, and yet a company of others went to 
San Bernardino, in the southern part of the 
State, and there formed a settlement. 

Several of these prominent Mormons who 
had come so far to get beyond the reach of the 
American flag, and who remained in California, 
eschewed Mormonism, contented themselves 
with the dual blessedness of the Gentiles, 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 47 

amassed wealth, and became good and influen- 
tial citizens. When the great rebellion broke 
out, instances of boisterous loyalty among them 
occurred, and it was refreshing to behold the 
intense affection they manifested for the old 
flaor, and their liberal contributions to sustain 
its glory. Tims runs the world. Circum- 
stances alter cases. We may live to see the 
day when those same parties will deem it expe- 
dient to curse the American flag as heartily as 
ever. 



THE END OF THE MEXICAN" WAR.— ACQUISI- 
TION OF CALIFORNIA. 

The arrival of the several military bodies 
that have been mentioned, of the Mormons and 
other emigrants who found their way over the 
Snowy Mountains and from Oregon, considera- 
bly augmented the white population of Cali- 
fornia in the years 1846-'47. The number of 
white emigrants — soldiers and civilians — settled 
throughout California in the early part of 1848, 
when the gold was discovered, may be estima- 
ted at two thousand. While active hostilities 



48 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

continued in Central Mexico, peace and order, 
under American rule, were maintained through- 
out California. 

It will be perceived that the Mexican War 
had an immediate and direct effect on the des- 
tiny of California — more so, perhaps, than on 
that of any other portion of Mexican territory ; 
and it precipitated the development of the great 
wealth discovered at that period. The war 
commenced in April, 1846, and terminated by 
a treaty of peace in which, for a trifling consid- 
eration, we came into quiet possession of the en- 
tire territory, with New Mexico, February 2, 
1848, the very day on which gold was discov- 
ered in California ! 



ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PACIFIC MAIL LINE 
OF STEAMERS. 

There is still another event which I will 
narrate, as one of the singular coincidences, and 
as having a highly important bearing on the 
rapid development of the discovery of gold in 
California, namely, the establishment of the 
Pacific mail line of steamers, in connection with 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 49 

Sloo's line to New Orleans and Chagres. 
Many, doubtless, believe that these lines of 
steamers were called into existence by the dis- 
covery of gold in California. The great discov- 
ery had nothing to do with originating these 
enterprises. 

The idea of an American line of mail-steam- 
ers from Panama up the Pacific coast, touching 
at several Mexican ports and terminating at 
Astoria, Oregon, is said to have originated with 
one J, M. Shively, a plain sort of man, who, at 
an early day, drifted from Massachusetts or 
Connecticut, across the continent, and finally 
located at Astoria, of which place he was ap- 
pointed postmaster. Shively returned to the 
United States in 1845, and when in Washing- 
ton, it is said, he suggested this line of steamers. 

At this time the controversy between the 
United States and Great Britain, respecting the 
Northwestern boundary, had become a very ex- 
citing topic. Our Government was exceedingly 
anxious to turn emigration into Oregon, and it 
is possible that Shively's idea of a line of steam- 
ers from Panama up the Pacific coast, may 
have been regarded favorably in Washington. 



50 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE ; OK, 

Whether this be true or not, President Polk, in 
the latter part of 1845, took decided measures 
to establish a means of conveyance to Oregon, 
that should be available to emigrants. In fur- 
therance of this project, the President invited 
Mr. J. M. Woodward, of New York, to visit 
Washington, and assist him with his informa- 
tion and counsels. 

Mr. Woodward was then engaged in the 
Baltic trade, and he had frequent and large 
consignments of emigrants from Norway, Swe- 
den, Denmark, and Prussia. He at once com- 
plied with the President's request. After sev- 
eral conferences with this high official, and 
some weeks spent in obtaining all the informa- 
tion possible on the subject, Mr. Woodward 
presented the following plan, namely : 

To prepare and send out a number of small 
boats, sufficient to take an entire shipment of 
emigrants and their baggage from the vessels, 
on their arrival at Chagres, and proceed up the 
Chagres River as far as Cruces ; from thence by 
pack-mules across the Isthmus of Panama, 
whence they were to embark on board sailing 
or steam vessels for Oregon. This plan was 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 51 

accompanied by the requisite estimates for its 
accomplishment, and the whole was submitted 
in the shape of a report to the President. He 
signified his hearty approval of the plan pro- 
posed, and by his direction, immediate steps 
were taken to obtain from Congress, then in 
session, the necessary appropriation. 

Thus the proposed transit line to Oregon 
was progressing favorably when the ultimatum 
of the British Government was submitted to the 
President and Senate, and accepted. This at 
once obviated the immediate necessity for the 
settlement of Oregon, and as a Government 
matter, the proposed transit line to that part of 
the world was dropped. As is customary with 
governments on such occasions, Mr. Woodward 
was unceremoniously dismissed, with no thanks 
for the time and money he had spent in the ser- 
vice of the administration. 

But Mr. Woodward, in the course of his 
efforts in behalf of the Government, had gained 
information respecting the commerce of the 
Pacific coast which induced him and several 
associates to believe that a line of steamers from 
Panama to Oregon would pay as a private 



52 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

enterprise, and he accordingly gave the matter 
this shape. 

At this time Colonel Sloo was applying for 
a grant of subsidy to carry the mail by steam- 
vessels from New York to Havana and New 
Orleans. E. K. Collins was also endeavoring to 
get a bill through Congress authorizing a line 
of mail-steamers between New York and Liver- 
pool. 

Mr. Woodward framed his bill to cover the 
Pacific coast route ; Sloo so changed his bill as 
to extend his line to Chagres, in order to con- 
nect with Woodward on the Isthmus of Darien, 
and all the bills, namely, Woodward's, Sloo's, 
and Collins', were passed on the last day of the 
session of 1846-'47. But either by oversight or 
design, Mr. Woodward's name was left out of 
the engrossed bill, and the Secretary of the Navy, 
Mr. Mason, decided that he must advertise for 
proposals for the Pacific line. He accordingly 
advertised for bids to carry the mails twice a 
month by steam from Panama to Astoria, in 
Oregon, touching at Eealejo in Central Amer- 
ica, Acapulco, Mazatlan, and Monterey in 
Mexico. San Francisco was not known at this 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD LN CALIFORNIA. 53 

time, and beyond shipping one or two cargoes 
of hides annually, Yerba Buena, its present site, 
had no commercial importance. 

Mr. Woodward put in a bid of $300,000 per 
annum, ten years, for side-wheel steamers, and 
an associate bid $150,000 for propellers. One 
Arnold Harris, as a speculation, blundered into 
a bid of $199,000 per annum. These were the 
only bids. 

The contract was awarded to Woodward's 
associate, who had bid $150,000 per annum for 
propellers, but with sucli conditions, not em- 
braced in the advertisement, as made it wholly 
inadmissible, and the bid was withdrawn. The 
contract was then awarded to Harris, as the 
next lowest bidder. Before Woodward's asso- 
ciate withdrew his bid, Harris had bound him- 
self in a bond to assign the contract to Wood- 
ward should it fall to him, Harris, by reason of 
such withdrawal. 

The contract having fallen to Harris, he paid 
no regard to his bond — which proved worthless 
—and after receiving the contract, he hawked 
it about New York for several months ; but as 
little was known respecting the proposed route, 



54 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

and taking into consideration the fact of the 
existence of the bond from Harris to Woodward, 
responsible parties outside of Woodward's com- 
pany manifested little inclination to undertake 
the enterprise. 

General Armstrong, then American consul 
at Liverpool, and a relative of Harris, now came 
forward and induced Mr. W. H. Aspinwall to 
take the matter into consideration. After a 
lively negotiation between the parties in New 
York, and the Secretary of the E"avy at Wash- 
ington, in which Mr. Woodward was entirely ig- 
nored, Mr. Aspinwall assumed the contract. A 
fierce litigation now ensued between Woodward 
and Harris and Aspinwall. But as usual in such 
cases, the brains and industry that had modestly 
and quietly originated and developed the enter- 
prise to a practical point, were forced to suc- 
cumb to the audacity and ravenous greed of 
capital, which never originates or invents. 

The contract assumed by Mr. Aspirfwall 
called for three side-wheel steamers, the first of 
which should sail for the Pacific in October, 
1848. The California was the pioneer steamer, 
and she sailed for her destination at the stipu 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 55 

latecl time. The Oregon followed in November, 
and lastly, tlie Panama. 

The news of the discovery of gold in Cali- 
fornia reached New York in November, 1818, 
about one month after the steamer California 
had sailed. 

THE TRIP OF THE FIRST PASSENGERS FROM 
NEW YORK TO SAN FRANCISCO BY STEAM. 

The first reports of the great discovery made 
but little impression on the public mind, but in 
a few weeks parties arrived direct from Cali- 
fornia, and their wonderful tales of auriferous 
developments, with the exhibition of consider- 
able precious dust from the placers, soon gave 
the people the gold fever. 

About the middle of December, 1818, the 
steamer Isthmus was advertised to sail for Cha- 
gres the 25th inst. But this steamer being de- 
layed, the Crescent City, Captain Stoddard, was 
dispatched by Messrs. Howard & Sons on the 
23d December, 1818. This steamer, with about 
one hundred and fifty passengers, myself among 
the number, arrived at Chagres January 2d, 
1819. 



56 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

Nothing of moment occurred on the voyage 
from New York to Chagres, except that, in a 
furious gale off Hatteras, a steward was washed 
overboard. Several large arm-chairs were 
thrown over to the unfortunate man as he floated 
past the stern of the ship, one of which he suc- 
ceeded in grasping, and, thus sustained, he was 
finally picked up and saved by the daring and 
good seamanship of a Boston sea-captain com- 
manding the life-boat, manned by four brave 
sailors, who, after an hour's most desperate ex- 
ertion, succeeded in pulling back to the steamer, 
which could do nothing more than lie-to and 
await their return. 

On reaching Chagres, we found the steamer 
Fulton had arrived the day before from New 
Orleans, with two hundred passengers. Here 
were nearly four hundred excited, adventurous 
gold-seekers congregated at this wretched place, 
composed of a hundred or more jacals, or cane 
huts, and inhabited by Indians, negroes, half- 
breeds, dogs, pigs, etc. These adventurers 
were robustiously frantic in their efforts to 
cross the isthmus and secure a passage on the 
steamer California, the arrival of which was 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 57 

daily expected at Panama. The dusky natives 
with their squalid children, their dogs and pigs, 
the monkeys, alligators, snakes, and all created 
things of the aligerous order, were roused from 
their dreamy lethargy by this sudden irruption 
of the Northern white race. The hubbub was 
terrific. 

The only mode of passage across the isthmus 
was by boats up the Chagres Elver to Crnces — 
some thirty-five miles — and thence by pedal or 
quadrupedal conveyance to Panama. Every 
species of boat that could be poled up the river 
was in tremendous demand. An astonishing 
number of lanchas, bwigos, eanoas, etc., were 
speedily brought together ; and in forty-eight 
hours from the time of their arrival, the passem 
gers were experiencing the distressing and 
highly peculiar navigation of the Chagres Kiver. 
Just as the larger portion had reached Cruces, 
the cholera, which had made its appearance on 
the steamer Fulton, broke out among them. 
The panic soon became fearful. The great 
body of gold-seekers rushed off for Panama, 
helter-skelter, pell-mell, some on mules, some 
on horses, and some on foot. Friend left friend 



58 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OK, 

to die ; and men brave under other circum- 
stances, slunk away from the danger they could 
not see, leaving their baggage to its fate on the 
river's bank, and scattered all over the town. 

I had joined a party of five in arrangements 
to cross the isthmus together. At Graces we 
occupied a cane hut, where we gathered our 
baggage, proposing to start for Panama after a 
night's stretching of our aching limbs, that had 
for many long hours been painfully cramped in 
the river boat. At four o'clock in the morning, 

one of our party, Mr. M , of New York, a 

gentleman of most agreeable disposition, and 
whose acquaintance I had made on board the 
Crescent City, roused me, and said he felt ill. 
An hour later he complained of being much 
worse, and in low tones begged me not to desert 
him should his illness prove to be the cholera. 
I immediately found a Dr. Clements — afterward 
torn to pieces by a grizzly bear in California — 

and requested him to call and see Mr. M . 

lie did so, and at once pronounced him ill of 
cholera. In five minutes not one of my com- 
panions was visible, and in less than half an 
hour they were all on the road to Panama, their 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 59 

baggage remaining piled up in the but. One 
of these was the Boston sea-captain who had 
so nobly risked his life in saving the steward of 
the Crescent City from a watery grave. That 
was a visible and familiar danger, against which 
he did not hesitate to oppose his strength, ex- 
perience, and skill ; but the unseen messenger 
of death hovering about, armed with a terrible 
pestilence and striking down his victims at ran- 
dom, was more than he could face. 

Of coarse I assured Mr. M that I would 

remain and do all in my power to save him from 
the terrible malady. For fifty dollars I hired a 
kind-hearted Irishman — left in charge of the 
baggage of General Persifer F. Smith, who had 
passed on to Panama — to assist me ; and then 
in the blaze and heat of the tropical sun we 
fought death with such slender means as under 
the circumstances we could command, till two 

o'clock, p. m., when poor M , wasted to a 

perfect skeleton in a few hours, yielded up his 
life. He feared not death, but his distress at 
the thought of leaving his family was over- 
powering. The last words he was able to utter, 
some two hours before his death, were a request 



60 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

that if ever I got back to the city of New York, 
I would see his family. I complied with this 
request during my visit to New York, in 1853, 
and I could not marvel at the distress of the 
father as he faced death, and felt that he must 
part with all that was dear to him on earth 
forever. I met with a lovely family — the 
mother and six children. There was the little 
one just "able to speak the words of gratitude as 
instructed by the mother, and so on, boys and 
girls, up to the fine youth of fifteen. As these 
children entered the room to meet me, they 
took my hand one after the other, and said, in 
the most touching manner, u God bless you, 
sir, for your kindness to our father ! " This was 
a trying scene. 

In the great revolution for good, and the 
happiness and comfort, direct and indirect, 
which we trust were among the first results of 
the discovery of gold in California, it must be 
admitted that there was also a vast amount of 
attendant evil, and that sorrow and misery were 
brought to the hearts of thousands and tens of 
thousands of loved and loving beings. There 
was scarcely a family throughout the length 



THE DISCOVEEY OF GOLD LN CALIFORNIA. 61 

and breadth of the land but what was affected 
for good or ill during the first years of the Cali- 
fornia gold-fever. 

With the assistance of several natives we 
buried Mr. M at 3 p. m., where other vic- 
tims among the passengers had been laid, the 
Rev. Mr. Douglas performing the funeral cere- 
mony. This clergyman remained and heroi- 
cally filled his sad office till there was no longer 

any necessity. Mr. M was the last victim 

m Cruces. He had several trunks well filled 
with every thing requisite for his comfort, on 
the long and uncertain journey before him, all 
evidently prepared and packed by loving hearts 
and willing hands. To go through the forms 
required by the alcalde, and get this little prop- 
erty in a condition to return to the family in 
New York, occupied me till far into the night 
— and what a weary, unearthly night it was ! 
Every passenger, except an old man, Mr. Eras- 
tus Sparrow, and Mr. Raymond, agent of the 
New York steamer, had departed. The natives 
were dying of cholera in considerable numbers ; 
but, as usual in these Catholic countries, the 
poor Indians evinced a kind of stolid resigna- 



62 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OK, 

tion to Fate, and resorted to religious ceremo- 
nies. During the night processions of gaunt 
forms, robed in long white gowns, moved 
through the miserable little town, chanting the 
Miserere and other doleful strains. Morning 
dawned at last ; the black pall of night was 
rolled up, and the unearthly aspect of things 
was dispelled. I had arranged with the alcalde 
to take charge of my own baggage and that of 
my light-footed companions, and forward it by 
first opportunity. I now began to look about 
for something to carry me to Panama. But 
every thing with four legs that could bear a 
burden had been pressed into the service, and 
there was nothing left for me. At length I met' 
with a very polite and scantily- clad Indian gen- 
tleman, who said that possibly he might obtain 
an animal for me in a few hours. Being very 
weary, I concluded to wait awhile, rather than 
start on foot. At noon the Indian brought me 
one of the small horses of the country, that ap- 
peared to be simply a framework of bones. I 
concluded, however, to take my chances with 
this defective beast. Before mounting: to de- 
part, I bade farewell to Mr. Sparrow, expressing 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 63 

the hope that we should meet at some future 
day in California. This desiccated old man had 
brought as far as Cruces a number of bales of 
india-rubber goods, which he declared he would 
stick to, cholera or no cholera ; and stick to 
them he did. He got them over the isthmus 
and on board the steamer California. On ar- 
riving at San Francisco he sold his goods at 
enormous prices, and starting on this success- 
ful venture, the old man made a large fortune 
in California, where he now resides. I met 
him in Wall Street nearly two years ago, in 
great haste to complete some financial transac- 
tions, preparatory to embarking for California 
the next day. He casually remarked that in 
a few days he would be a hundred and oue 
years old. On expressing my surprise at this, 
he remarked that when a boy, living in one of 
the back towns of Massachusetts, he heard the 
thunder of the cannon at the battle of Bunker 
Hill. Whether the old gentleman numbers 
between one and two hundred years or not I 
am unable to say. I can assert, however, that 
he is the oldest specimen of pluck and determi- 
nation I have ever met. 



64: THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE ; OK, 

There being nothing more to detain me at 
Cruces, I took my departure. With the excep- 
tion of some of my lonely trips across the des- 
erts of Arizona, surrounded by the merciless 
Apaches, I cannot remember to have been in so 
forlorn a situation as when I started on my sol- 
itary way from Cruces to Panama, without food 
for the journey, worn down by the continued 
excitement of painful scenes and want of rest, 
and with half a dozen cayenne-pepper pills in 
my pocket — given me by Dr. Clements — to 
take should I be, as others had been, attacked 
by cholera en route. To add to my troubles, 
the small steed furnished me by the polite and 
scantily-clad Indian gentleman broke down, so 
far as being able to carry me, before evening. 
I should have turned him out to grass by the 
roadside, but I had bound myself in writing, 
under the penalty of an enormous sum, com- 
pared with the value of the animal, to deliver 
him safe and sound to Seflor Somebody in Pan- 
ama ; and not feeling inclined to be accessory 
to the swindle, I assisted the harmless creature 
over the rugged and steep mountain-path, and 
dragged him out of the mud-holes which were 
frequent, it being the rainy season. 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 65 

In tins manner, Eackabones and I slowly 
worked our way to within some twelve miles 
of Panama, when just at nightfall, as we were 
passing what appeared to be a deserted hut, 
some one within cried out, " Halloo, stranger ! " 
This proved to be a fellow -passenger named F. 
C. Gray, who had left Cruces the evening be- 
fore on foot, and now he appeared to be suffer- 
ing from cholera, as he supposed, but it proved 
to be what became known as Panama fever. I 
had been in hopes of reaching an inhabited spot 
where something in the way of edibles could be 
obtained before stopping for the night. The 
horde of passengers had cleared Cruces and the 
road of every thing, and I had not tasted a 
mouthful since morning. Mr. Gray begged me 
to lodge with him, and he offered his remaining 
stock of provisions, a box of sardines, and some 
bits of hard bread. I partook of a part of 
these, and after making the best provision pos- 
sible for my equine protege, Gray and myself 
arranged to pass the night as comfortably as the 
circumstances would admit. At dawn of day, 
being somewhat refreshed, and Gray feeling 
able to proceed, we resumed our journey, dri- 



GQ THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE ; OR, 

ving Rackabones before us, and weighing the 
probabilities of the future. 

This Mr. Gray reached San Francisco by 
the steamer California, and he was the first of 
the new-comers to open a gambling-saloon. 
Having speedily gained a large amount of mo- 
ney, he suddenly cut loose from the gambling 
fraternity, and commenced business as a banker 
under the firm of Graham, Gray & Co., and 
was elected alderman at the first charter elec- 
tion. This and other public offices he filled 
creditably until 1853, when he came to New 
York, purchased a fine up-town house, made 
every arrangement to live elegantly, and then, 
one fine morning, he went out to the Hudson 
River Railroad track, and watching his opportu- 
nity just as the train came thundering along, 
laid his neck on the rail and was horribly de- 
capitated. No reason could be given for the 
rash act. California developed some extraordi- 
nary characters. 

Three miles from Panama we came to a sta- 
tion, where we were able to hire mule convey- 
ance to the city. I turned over Rackabones to 
the master muleteer, who promised to deliver 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 67 

him to the agent, and at length, in the after- 
noon of the 11th of January, 1819, I entered 
the gates of the ancient and renowned city of 
Panama, astride a meagre mule of cadaverous 
expression and remarkably long ears. My 
broad-brimmed Indian straw hat was in a con- 
dition to be of little use, and it certainly was 
not ornamental. My clothes were badly torn, 
and I was plastered over with mud from head 
to foot. Assisting that small horse — so kindly 
procured for me by the Indian gentleman at 
Cruces — across the isthmus, was the principal 
cause of the sorry plight in which I made my 
appearance at Panama. My fellow-passengers 
had given me up as a victim to the cholera, and 
now they could only recognize me as a spirit 
from the vasty deep — of mud. 

The passengers were now congregated at 
Panama, awaiting the steamer California via 
Cape Horn, fully due. The steamer might ar- 
rive at any hour, or, if an accident had befallen 
her, she might not arrive for weeks. The ab- 
sorbing interest of this point, with the better ac- 
commodations afforded in Panama, had caused 
the cholera panic to abate, though cases of both 



68 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

cholera and Panama fever were constantly oc- 
curring in the city ; but in a short time the 
cholera disappeared entirely. Considering the 
bad season, the fatigne and exposure in crossing 
the isthmus, the lack of accommodations and 
medical attendance, with the imprudent indul- 
gences of many of the strangers, it is remarka- 
ble that a larger number were not swept off by 
the fell destroyer. 

I had secured my passage on the steamer 
California before leaving New York. Others 
had done the same; but the majority were 
obliged to take the chance of obtaining a pas- 
sage at Panama. The anxious state of mind 
that prevailed among the latter can well be im- 
agined. 

Having secured comfortable quarters, and 
rested a clay or two, I joined a party of four in 
a whaleboat excursion down the bay — fifteen 
miles — to the Island of Taboga, now the station 
of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. 

Like a mass of molten gold, the waters of 
the bay, in sluggish swells and coquettish rip- 
ples, darted back the solar rays. It all looked 
very pleasant and very inviting, and there ap- 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 69 

peared to be nothing but tropical heat to mar 
the pleasures of the excursion, and a row to the 
island lying in the calm, golden haze of the 
horizon seemed to be an easy matter. But it 
proved otherwise, as it required hard pulling, 
nearly all day to reach our landing. We were 
well rewarded, however, for our exertions. 
Modern utilitarianism had not broken in upon 
the primitive loveliness of this tropical island 
gem, nor obliterated the paradisiacal aspect that 
in gentleness and peace had rested there upon 
things animate and inanimate from the time 
Eve tempted and Adam fell ; and which, in a 
few years, cannot, in view of commercial prog- 
ress, be found in any spot on earth. 

The beach was strewn with singing shells of 
exquisite tints and beautifully mottled ; balmy 
breezes tempered the tropical heat, and delicious 
waters leaped in silvery cascades over rocks on 
the hill-sides, and murmured through the dells. 
The pine-apple, orange, banana, and other rich 
fruits, were seen amid groves of the tamarind, 
cocoanut, mango, and palm ; vines ran in fes- 
toons from tree to tree, and hung in swaying 
pendants from the branches ; flowers of brilliant 



70 

hue enlivened the landscape, while birds of 
gaudy plumage fluttered and sang in bush and 
tree ; and lovely Indian maidens, who dreamed 
away life in a voluptuous atmosphere that in- 
vited to blissful relaxation and repose, bathed 
in rock-bound pools of cool, crystal waters, 
found in picturesque recesses hidden by a net- 
work of foliage and flowers. 

So charming did the island appear, that we 
determined, on receiving our baggage at Pana- 
ma, to return and await the arrival of the 
steamer California, in this lovely and healthy 
spot. Having secured a commodious Indian hut, 
we started for Panama early the next morning. 
Before a third of the distance had been made, 
signs of a heavy blow appeared, and soon a 
furious gale struck us on our starboard bow. 
There was but one practical sailor on board 
— the Boston sea-captain — and now in our per- 
ilous situation he did us good service. We 
could not make headway against the winds 
and waves; we could only drift toward the 
mainland, lying some distance to the northwest. 
The boat was driven into an estuary of the bay, 
toward a coast that appeared precipitous and 



THE DISCOVEEY OF GOLD IN CALIFOENIA. 71 

rocky, with here and there a patch of sand- 
beach, which by the rolling of the breakers ap- 
peared to be somewhat shelving. We knew we 
were to be dashed upon this coast, and that every 
tiling depended upon our being able to so guide 
the boat that the breakers would throw it upon 
one of the patches of sand-beach instead of dash- 
ing; it against the rocks, where our destruction 
would be inevitable. A few rods to the right 
or to the left, and we would be hurled against 
the rocks and lost. On we were driven, riding 
the crest of the furious waves as nothing but a 
whaleboat can ride, direct for the little haven 
that promised a chance for life, until seized upon 
by the last breaker. Here we lost all control 
of the boat, and at one moment we appeared to 
be making directly for the rocks, and at the 
next we were whirled past within a few feet 
and cast high and dry on the patch of sand- 
beach for which we had steered, but with a 
shock that partially stove the upper works on 
one side of the boat, and threw us out with stun- 
ning violence. All were more or less bruised, 
and one of the party received an injury in the 
spine from which he never recovered. 



72 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

It was now late in the afternoon, our water 
and provisions all consumed, the raging sea on 
one side, a high, steep bank crested with chap- 
arral on the other, and one of the party dis- 
abled. Placing onr boat beyond the reach of 
the angry waves, we at once commenced scram- 
bling up the bank and working our way inland 
through the chaparral in search of something 
human. The country appeared wild and deso- 
late, and should it prove to be entirely unin- 
habited, our situation would be in the highest 
degree deplorable. For an hour we continued 
our painful exploration, tearing our clothes and 
flesh in the dense chaparral, and encountering 
nothing but all sorts of snakes, lizards, and de- 
testable bugs and flies. At length we struck a 
trail, which, in a few moments, led us to an 
open patch of ground and an Indian hut, where 
our eyes were gladdened by the sight of ollas 
of cool water and plenty of chickens and yams. 
The Indians were kind and hospitable. They 
cooked for us ; we ate and drank, and soon our 
bodily pains were forgotten in " Nature's sweet 
restorer, balmy sleep." 

The first question in the morning was, how 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 73 

to get back to Panama, sixty miles distant by 
land, and only reached by circuitous and blind 
Indian paths. By sea the distance was twenty 
miles, more than a day's hard pull, according 
to our experience, saying nothing of the un- 
certainty of the winds and waves. Ingenuity 
solved the difficulty. Noticing the light but 
tightly-woven and strong mats used by the na- 
tives to lie or sit upon, we purchased two of our 
kind Indian host, and by sewing them together 
with pita, we made a very respectable sprit- 
sail ; with nothing but a machete we worked out 
a mast, and, well supplied with strips of hide for 
strings and ropes, we repaired to the shore, not 
more than half a mile distant, guided by the 
Indian through a well-beaten path. We stepped 
the mast and rigged the sail; the gale had sub- 
sided, but the sea still rolled heavily, and, as the 
best part of the day was spent, we concluded to 
return to the Indian's hut for the night, and 
take an early start in the morning. At dawn 
of day, being well supplied with water, boiled 
chicken, and yams, we again repaired to the 
shore, to find a smooth sea and a dead calm. 

Fate appeared to be against us. We waited till 
4 



74 THE EOMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

11 o'clock, when the sea-breeze sprang up. At 

12 m., the tide served, we launched our boat, 
spread our sail, and put out. The novel sail 
worked so well that we were able to dispense 
with the white-ash breeze, except for the last 
mile or two, and just as the shades of evening 
fell we landed at the mole in Panama, with a 
wholesome experience that taught us the hard- 
ship and uncertainty attending rowing excur- 
sions in those waters. 

The next morning, all the baggage I left in 
charge of the alcalde at Cruces arrived, and I 
arranged to return to the Island of Taboga the 
following day. But I was suddenly taken with 
the cholera, and in view of the fatigue and 
hardships to which I had been exposed, 1 
promised to be a ready victim. The cholera 
was subsiding in Panama, and having escaped 
thus far, I had ceased to consider myself in any 
great clanger of being attacked by this dreadful 
malady. But it struck me at last, and for a 
short time the conflict between life and death 
was terrible. In the midst of this desperate 
struggle I had consciousness enough left to be 
aware that something extraordinary was taking 



THE DISCOVERT OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 75 

place in the city. My lodgings were near the 
sea-wall and facing the bay. Suddenly there 
was a rush of people and the trampling of 
many feet directly under my window. There 
were discordant shouts and cries, and then the 
shout went up in and around the house, "Steam- 
er coming ! steamer coming ! " A dark speck 
had been discerned in the horizon, seaward, 
then a murky streak, and finally the black hull 
of a steamer appeared coming rapidly up the 
bay. It proved to be the long and anxiously 
expected steamer California. This was the 17th 
day of January, 1849. 

The effect on myself was magical. The 
power of will revived with tenfold vigor, and 
this, with the kind and assiduous care of Dr. 
Samuel Haley, soon gained the victory. Life 
conquered, death vanished, and in a few days 
I was able to sit up, and from my window look 
out upon the first American steamer that ever 
floated in Pacific waters, riding proudly at an- 
chor in the harbor of Panama. 

With the arrival of the steamer California at 
Panama commenced scenes of wild excitement, 
which continued for days and even weeks. 



76 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

Here were congregated hundreds of adventurers, 
many of them wild and reckless, and all more 
or less actuated by the most powerful motives 
by which man is moved, namely, fear, or a de- 
sire to flee from a sickly place on the one hand, 
and the auri sacra fames on the other ; and 
but few of all these had their passage secured 
on the steamer California. 

It will be remembered that no news of the 
discovery of gold in California had reached 
New York when the steamer California sailed 
for the Pacific, and she had been fitted up to ac- 
commodate only about seventy-five passengers. 
No sooner, therefore, had she dropped anchor in 
the harbor of Panama, than Zachary & Nelson, 
the agents of the steamer, directed that every 
arrangement to carry the largest number of 
passengers possible should be made. The fit- 
ting up and placing on board the necessary 
supplies would require ten or twelve days. 
During this period the contest to obtain passage 
tickets on the steamer raged, and the excite- 
ment was increased by the arrival of passengers 
brought to Cruces by sailing vessels and steam- 
ers. It was finally discovered that no tickets 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 77 

could be sold by the agents in Panama, as the 
office in E"ew York had actually over-sold the 
passenger capacity of the steamer. What added 
fuel to the flame, was the fact that the steamer 
on touching at Callao, on her way up the Pa- 
cific coast, had received on board some seventy- 
five Peruvians as steerage passengers, the news 
of the discovery of gold in California having 
reached that region. " What right," exclaimed 
the ticketless passengers, "has an American 
steamer to give passage to wretched greasers, 
when so many honest American miners are 
awaiting a conveyance to American territory to 
dig American gold ? " 

Indignation meetings were held in front of 
the office of Zachary & Nelson, of the hotels, and 
on the plaza. It is doubtful whether the an- 
cient city of Panama, in the old buccaneer times, 
ever witnessed such continued scenes of uproar, 
excitement, and confusion, as reigned through- 
out the place during the sojourn of the first 
California gold-seekers. 

But the steamer was declared ready at last, 
and all who had tickets were taken on board. 
The passengers numbered over five hundred, 



78 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OK, 

and there were as many more remaining at 
Panama, to find their way to California by 
sailing vessels, or by the steamer Oregon, the 
next of the California line — due in February. 
I had sufficiently recovered to go on board with 
a number of other cholera and Panama-fever 
convalescents. Among the passengers were 
General Persifer F. Smith and staff; John Mc- 
Dougall, the first Governor of the State after it 
was admitted into the Union ; Hardin Bige- 
low, first mayor of Sacramento City ; Rodman 
M. Price, then purser in the Navy, since Gov- 
ernor of New Jersey; T. B. Yan Buren, Esq., 
now Colonel Yan Buren, of New York ; the Pev. 
Messrs. "Wheeler, Wiley, and Douglass, with 
others who became more or less distinguished. 

The California steamed out of Panama Bay 
on the last day of January, 1849. The after- 
cabin was crowded, and every part of the for- 
ward-cabin — in reality the steerage — was fitted 
up with bunks, while the poor Peruvians were 
permitted to make themselves as comfortable 
as circumstances would admit, on the upper 
deck. This ship, of eleven hundred tons, was 
literally alive with human beings. 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 79 

"We had not been at sea forty-eight hours, 
before serious trouble arose among the steerage 
or forward-cabin passengers, respecting the food 
with which they were furnished, the horrible 
stench and filth that prevailed, and the utter 
neglect of the agents and officers to provide for 
the comfort of those who from necessity had 
taken passage in that part of the ship. It was 
evident to all that positive suffering throughout 
the passage would be the consequence. 

Morning, noon, and night, those passengers 
were fed like so many animals on wormy char- 
qui or jerked beef, old and musty hard bread, 
and miserable coffee. These passengers were 
not, for the most part, of the class usually found 
in the steerage. There were lawyers, doctors, 
merchants, and clergymen, with many oth- 
ers, who went in the steerage because by no 
possible means could they go in the cabin. 
There were also those who turned out to be 
thieves, robbers, blacklegs, and murderers. The 
educated and the ignorant, the refined and the 
vulgar, the good and the bad, saints and sin- 
ners, were huddled together in the hold of 
that ship without distinction. All had paid a 



80 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

high price for their passage; several had pur- 
chased their tickets second-hand, and given a 
thousand dollars bonus. They did not expect 
cabin fare, but they demanded palatable food 
as their right, and when they found tins could 
not be obtained, their indignation knew no 
bounds. 

The first move of the sufferers was to ap- 
point a committee — not an unusual proceeding 
with an American constituency — to wait on the 
captain, and represent their grievances. The 
eloquence of the chairman of the committee, a 
first-class butcher, was more forcibly direct than 
persuasively elegant. " Is that crawling stuff," 
said he, pointing to a kid of beef that had 
been placed before the captain, " the kind of 
food to crowd down the throats of free-born 
Americans ? " With all the serious points in 
the matter, this scene was ludicrous in the ex- 
treme. 

Captain Cleveland Forbes brought the ship 
from New York to Panama, and although he 
remained on board — being much out of health 
— the ship was in charge of one Captain Mar- 
shall, an excellent navigator, a well-meaning 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 81 

man, and apparently desirous of doing all in 
his power to make the passengers comfortable. 
But Captain Marshall lacked force of will, and 
decision, and at the very start he lost all control 
of the passengers, especially those in the steer- 
age, who numbered four-fifths of all on board. 
These passengers virtually had possession of the 
ship from the beginning to the end of the voyage. 
They simply permitted the engineer to manage 
the engine, and the captain to do the naviga- 
tion. 

To the committee on food, Captain Marshall 
respectfully replied, that the ship sailed from 
Panama under an emergency. There was a 
great crowd of passengers clamoring to get on 
board to go to California. Nothing of the kind 
had been anticipated when the ship left New 
York, and they had not been able to fully pre- 
pare for this unexpected state of things. The 
best provisions that Panama afforded had been 
purchased for the voyage, and if they proved 
of bad quality it was not his fault. 

The passengers acknowledged the truth of 
all this, except the statement that the best pro- 
visions Panama afforded had been purchased. 



82 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

On this and minor points the excitement con- 
tinued, and soon there were scenes of violence 
around the cook's quarters. A band of roughs, 
their anger excited, and their appetites whetted 
by the sight and smell of savory dishes cooked 
for the cabin, attacked the cook and stewards, 
drove them from the cook-house, and took for- 
cible possession of the viands. These scenes of 
violence occurred on several consecutive days, 
greatly to the discomfort of the cabin passen- 
gers ; and there were signs of further serious 
mischief brewing, when we entered the harbor 
of Acapulco. 

This brought temporary relief. All the 
passengers who could afford it, laid in such sup- 
plies as could be obtained — eggs, fresh bread, 
fresh and dried fruits, good coffee, etc., etc., 
and after the ship had taken in a supply of wa- 
ter, we again put to sea. 

In a few days the fresh provisions were all 
consumed, and general demoralization again 
prevailed. The blasphemy in the steerage be- 
came terrific — a phenomenon. One of the most 
distinguished clergymen now residing in San 
Francisco was in the steerage. His nature was 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 83 

as sensitive and gentle as that of a woman. 
The roughest of the passengers treated him with 
the greatest kindness, and when on Sunday he 
performed divine service, their violence and 
terrible blasphemy subsided, and meek as lambs 
they listened to the words of the man of God. 

I asked this clergyman what he thought of 
such blasphemy, and I was struck with the 
discretion and sound philosophy evinced by his 
reply. He said it was certainly hard swearing, 
but the circumstances under which it occurred 
were exceptional. Such a human cargo, so 
much savage energy and active enterprise, were 
never before pent up in one small ship under 
such peculiar circumstances. There was much 
to irritate, and every thing to excite to an ex- 
traordinary degree; and while the passengers 
were angry on some points relating to the ship, 
they felt truly kind toward each other, and on 
the whole the swearing did not amount to 
much. A harsher view of the matter, and de- 
nunciation, would only make matters worse. 

We were now making for the port of Mazat- 
lan, and when within a day's sail of the place, 
the wheels of the steamer began to turn slowly, 



84 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE ; OK, 

and gradually they ceased moving altogether. 
For a time the cause of this stoppage was not 
made known, but finally it was announced that 
the firemen had mutinied and refused to perform 
their duty any longer. These firemen were 
actually sustained in their mutinous proceed- 
ings by the rougher portion of the steerage pas- 
sengers ; and such was the general demoraliza- 
tion of the ship, and so completely had the 
officers lost all control, that for several hours 
we lay rolling about like a log in a pretty rough 
sea, and no attempt made to fire up and move 
on our course. But the perversity of human 
nature being satisfied at last, the firemen again 
went to work, and in due time we anchored in 
the harbor of Mazatlan. The captain here 
showed pluck and determination for the first 
time. With the aid of the Mexican authorities 
he seized the ringleaders of the mutinous fire- 
men, put them on shore, and shipped Mexi- 
cans in their place. Again the passengers re- 
freshed themselves with the good things of 
Mazatlan, and obtained temporary relief on 
board ship by taking in a supply of such pro- 
visions as the place afforded, without which 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 85 

they could not have been sustained to the end 
of the voyage. A few days out from Mazatlan, 
the same state of demoralization prevailed, and 
the scenes of riot and confusion were of frequent 
occurrence. All this arose from the fact that 
at the several ports made by the steamer, the 
officers, with singular futility, while doing noth- 
ing to ameliorate the condition of the steerage 
passengers, took in, right before their eyes, fresh 
supplies for the cabin. 

Thus matters stood until within three hun- 
dred miles of Monterey, in California, when the 
steamer's wheels again came to a dead stand. 
None of the passengers could imagine the cause, 
but soon it was announced that every pound of 
coal had been consumed ! This, indeed, was a 
serious matter, something calculated to restore 
order, and sober everybody. Three hundred 
miles from port, live hundred half-starved passen- 
gers, a short supply of water and provisions, and 
few vessels then to be met with in that part of 
the world ; no steam, no sails rigged, and heavy 
gales of frequent occurrence at that season ; not 
the most agreeable prospect, it must be acknowl- 
edged. 



86 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

But something must be done. The ship was 
heeled over, to throw one of the wheels ont of 
water, and men were set at work to take off the 
floats. The sails that had been stored in New 
York were got out, and such as could be were 
bent. But so tightly were the floats held in 
the rusty iron bands, that after working nearly 
a whole day, but one float was removed. This 
proceeding was then abandoned, the ship right- 
ed, and all sail possible was spread, in the hope 
that fair headway might be made. But even 
with a fair wind the ship did not move a knot 
an hour, and it was evident that some other 
mode of getting out of the difficulty must be 
devised. Hour by hour matters grew worse, 
and the prospect became more gloomy. Some- 
thing must be done. A consultation was held 
on the quarter-deck, and it was resolved to burn 
every spar and plank, every piece of wood that 
could be cut or torn from the inside of the ship 
without endangering the hull, in the hope that 
steam might be kept up until we could reach 
Monterey. 

Tackles were at once rigged, and the work of 
raising spare plank, spars, etc., from the lower 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALD70RNIA. 87 

hold commenced. Every axe and saw on board 
was put in requisition, and the passengers went 
to work with a will, although some of those in 
the steerage appeared to take a sullen delight in 
the difficulty, and it actually seemed as though 
they would willingly go to the bottom of the 
sea could they but take the ship with them and 
spite the owners. 

The work of gathering planks, spars, etc., 
and of sawing, cutting, splitting, and smashing 
went on vigorously all over the ship. Steam 
was raised, and the ship turned on her course. 
But the last planks and spars were being raised 
from the hold, the demolition of berths in both 
steerage and cabin had already commenced, 
when it became evident that all the wood that 
could be got out of the inside of the ship would 
not keep up steam but a few hours, and a heavy 
gloom was beginning to settle down upon the 
passengers, when all were electrified by the cry 
of " Coal ! coal ! coal ! " On taking up the last 
planks and spars in the lower hold, there were 
discovered lying on the keel a hundred bags of 
coal, shipped in New York as ballast, and the 
fact was not known to any officer or other indi- 
vidual on board. 



88 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

The work of cutting and sawing wood ceased, 
the coal was raised, and we continued on our 
way rejoicing. But now another difficulty was 
encountered. As we neared the coast a dense 
fog prevailed, and for nearly a whole day we 
groped about where we supposed the entrance 
to Monterey Bay should be. 

Our newly-found supply of coal was being 
rapidly consumed, and matters again began to 
look somewhat dubious, when the fog lifted for 
a few moments, and Purser Price, who had been 
on that coast before, got hold of what he was 
very certain were the headlands at the entrance 
of Monterey Bay ; and taking the coarse indica- 
ted by Mr. Price, we steered through the dense 
fog directly into Monterey harbor, and the fires 
were getting low, for want of coal, when we 
came to anchor. 

We remained in Monterey a week to obtain 
a supply of wood sufficient to carry us to San 
Francisco, ninety miles distant. Captain Mar- 
shall offered five dollars per day to every pas- 
senger who would chop wood. Numbers in the 
condition known as " strapped " accepted the 
offer, and having got on board an adequate sup- 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 89 

ply of the fuel, we put to sea for the last time. 
After a rapid run we entered the Golden Gate, 
and amid the thunder of cannon, the shouts of 
the people of San Francisco, and their wild re- 
joicings, we anchored in the bay on the 28th 
day of February, 1849, sixty-seven days from 
New York, and twenty-nine days from Panama. 
Thus ended the eventful trip of the first pas- 
sengers from New York to California, and thus 
terminated the extraordinary voyage of the first 
steamer from Panama to San Francisco, having 
come round Cape Horn, the pioneer of the Pa- 
cific Mail Steamship Company's line. It is 
somewhat of a marvel that the steamer arrived 
in San Francisco with all her passengers safe 
and sound. But not a single death occurred, 
and no sickness worth mentioning. There was 
too much excitement, too much indignation on 
board to allow of any sickness. The ship 
was on fire several times, but these fires were 
extinguished without any general or serious 
alarm. Considerable heavy weather was en- 
countered, but nothing that caused damage to 
the ship. The short supply of coal, the bad 
food, the filth, and the demoralized and muti- 



90 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE ; OK, 

nous state of feeling that prevailed in conse- 
quence, were the sources of the principal trou- 
ble, and these came very near being productive 
of serious disaster. 

Seventeen years have passed since the occur- 
rence of the events just narrated. Captains 
Cleveland and Marshall, General Persifer F. 
Smith, Governor McDougall, and Mayor Bige- 
low, are all dead. At a meeting of surviving 
passengers held a year ago in San Francisco, to 
celebrate the anniversary of the arrival of the 
steamer California, February 28, 1849, 1 under- 
stand that nineteen only of the five hundred pas- 
sengers who then landed, could be counted as 
still being in the land of the living. There are, 
no doubt, many more in existence, scattered 
throughout different parts of the world, and 
they doubtless retain a vivid recollection of the 
excitement of the time, and the extraordinary 
scenes through which they passed. 

It will be perceived that the Pacific mail- 
steamers were built and dispatched just in sea- 
son to accommodate the first rush of passengers 
to California. It had required nearly three 
years to originate the line, obtain the contract 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALD70ENIA. 91 

from the Government, build the steamers, and 
dispatch them to the Pacific. Astoria was to 
have been the northern terminus of the line; 
San Francisco was not mentioned. This enter- 
prise, in connection with Sloo's line to New 
Orleans and Chagres, could not have been 
timed more opportunely to meet the necessities 
of the case. 

I have now described that remarkable com- 
bination of events antecedent to the discovery 
of gold in California, adding thereto, as an in- 
teresting incident of the time, and a personal 
reminiscence, an account of the trip of the first 
passengers from New York to San Francisco. 

We see that the English were just too late ; 
the Bear flag was just behind time, so were the 
Mormons. The American flag was raised in 
California exactly in the nick of time, and the 
war with Mexico ended just as opportunely. 
The gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill not a 
moment too soon or too late; the United States 
closed the bargain for California on the very 
day the gold was discovered, and the Pacific 
Mail and Sloo's lines of steamers were ready at 
the precise moment they were wanted to accom- 



92 

mod ate the immense treasure, mail, and passen- 
ger business that immediately sprang up be- 
tween the old States and the Pacific shores. 
All these events culminated between July, 1846, 
and February, 1848, a period of only eighteen 
months. 



NO POSITIVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXISTENCE 
OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA, PREVIOUS TO ITS 
DISCOVERY. 

It should be borne in mind that any dis- 
covery of gold in California, or positive knowl- 
edge of its existence, or any well-grounded be- 
lief that this precious metal would be found in 
considerable quantities in that territory, formed, 
up to this time, little or no part of the attrac- 
tions of the country, and had no influence in 
causing the remarkable combination of events 
just described. 

Every section of country in the New World 
was, at the time of its discovery, reported as 
being rich in the precious metals. Voyagers 
and explorers made the most extravagant and 
reckless statements respecting the quantity of 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 93 

gold and silver to be found in the lands they 
visited. California is thus mentioned in the 
history of the early voyagers. 

Hakluyt, in his account of the first voyage 
of discovery made by Sir Francis Drake to the 
coast of California in 1577, says : " There is no 
part of the earth here to be taken up wherein 
there is not some special likelihood of gold and 
silver." 

Another account says : " The earth of the 
country seemed to promise rich veins of gold 
and silver, some of the ore being constantly 
found on digging." 

Pinkerton, in his description of Drake's 
voyage, remarks : " The land is so rich in gold 
and silver, that upon the slightest turning it up 
with a spade or pick-axe, these rich metals 
plainly appear mixed with the mould." 

A priest of the mission of San Jose, bay of 
San Francisco, named Loyala Cavello, on re- 
turning to Spain, published, in 1690, a work on 
Upper California, in which he stated the occur- 
rence of gold in placers. 

The His tori co-Geographical Dictionary of 
Antonio de Alcedo, 1786-'89, positively asserts 



94: THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OK, 

the existence of gold in California, even in 
lumps of five to eight pounds. 

Humboldt visited Mexico in 1803. He went 
as far north as Mazatlan, and after exploring the 
mining districts of the interior, worked by the 
Spaniards, he made the remarkable statement — 
as will be found in the narrative of his travels — 
that in his opinion the precious metals, which in 
that portion of Mexico were only reached at 
great depth, would be found in large quantities 
near the surface in the extreme northern part 
of the Spanish possessions, referring to what are 
now the Territories of Arizona and New Mexico, 
and, the States of Nevada, Colorado, and Cali- 
fornia. 

The Penny Cyclopaedia of 1836 thus disposes 
of the matter: "In minerals Upper California 
is not rich. A small silver mine has been found 
east of St. Ines, but it has been abandoned. In 
one of the rivers falling into the southern Tulare 
lakes, gold has been found, but as yet in very 
small quantities." 

In 1837, a priest went from California to 
Guatemala, and by his representations induced 
Mr. Young Anderson, a Scotch gentleman, to 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 95 

attempt to enlist English capital for the purpose 
of exploring for gold in the vicinity of San 
Francisco. The scheme was regarded in Eng- 
land as quixotic. 

Prof. J. J. Dana, of Wilkes's exploring expe- 
dition, came across the land from Oregon to 
Sutter's Fort in 1842, and, in his geological re- 
port of the country, he mentioned the favorable 
appearance of both California and Oregon for 
gold. 

One Dr. Sanders, a Swede of scientific at- 
tainments, and who had resided in Mexico, was 
sent by the Duke of Bedford to explore Cali- 
fornia. He explored the Butte Mountains, and 
all that region, in 1843, and on leaving the 
country he told Captain Sutter that he found evi- 
dences of gold in the mountains, but he would 
not advise him to search for it, as, in his opinion, 
it would only pay a government to work the 
mines, should any be found. "Your mine," 
said Dr. Sanders, " is in the soil." 

On the 21st of December, 1846, L. W. Sloat, 
Esq., who had made a brief visit to California, 
read a very interesting paper before the Lyceum 
of Natural History, in New York, in which he 



expressed his views relative to the existence of 
gold, silver, etc., throughout that territory, in 
the following positive manner : " There is not 
the least doubt in my mind, from all the infor- 
mation I was enabled to obtain during my stay 
in California, that gold, silver, tpieksilver, cop- 
per, lead, sulphur, asphaltum, and coal, are to be 
found in all that region; and I am confident 
that when it becomes settled — as it soon will be 
by Americans — the mineral developments will 
greatly exceed in richness and rarity the most 
sanguine expectations." 

Now to the careless reader all this would be 
considered a strong record, and it would seem 
as though the existence of gold in California, in 
quantities as discovered in our day, has been 
known from the time of Drake's first voyage in 
1577. But a little intelligent investigation of the 
subject will show that all these extravagant rep- 
resentations respecting the existence of the pre- 
cious metals in California were utterly baseless. 

The statements of the existence of an abun- 
dance of gold and silver, such as those of Hak- 
luyt, Pinkerton, Cavello, and Alcedo, must have 
been purely imaginary. Those of Drake's his- 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD LN CALIFORNIA. 97 

torians especially are perfectly absurd. Neither 
gold nor silver has as yet been found in any* 
part of California that Drake and his compan- 
ions ever saw or heard of. 

Gold is not found on the coast, in the Coast 
Range of mountains, nor in the valleys beyond. 
It is not found until the spurs of the Sierra 
Nevada range, two or three hundred miles from 
the coast, are reached ; and the silver district 
is located still further in the interior. Both 
gold and silver were found at last in an entirely 
different region of the territory from that in 
which their existence was predicted. 

Another evidence of defects in the his- 
tories of voyages and explorations in those 
days is the fact that when California was 
first discovered and occupied by the Euro- 
peans, not an ounce of gold or silver was 
found among the aborigines! and they were 
possessed of no description of metal. Their 
rude implements of peace and war were made 
of wood, stone, or bone. The only ornaments 
discovered among them were chains of bone 
and crowns of network, wrought with feathers 
of many colors. 



98 

Captain Woode Rogers, who touched on the 
coast of Lower California in 1709, describes the 
aborigines as quite naked, except that the 
women wore a short petticoat, reaching scarcely 
to the knees, and made of grass, or the skins of 
pelicans or deer. Some of them wore pearls 
around their necks, which they fastened with a 
string of silk-grass, having first notched them 
all round; and Captain Rogers imagined they 
did not know how to bore them. These pearls 
were mixed with sticks, bits of shells, and little 
red berries. 

It is a singular fact that during the several 
ages California was claimed and occupied by 
the Spaniards, and down to the period when 
gold was actually discovered at Sutter's Mill, 
not a single event of special moment had oc- 
curred tending to excite attention on the sub- 
ject of the existence of an abundance of gold in 
that territory, or cause any effort to be made 
for its discovery. 

It is true that in 1842 a gold placer was 
found in the vicinity of San Fernando, twenty 
miles east of Los Angeles. About $14,000 
were taken out of this placer in the course of a 



THE DISCO VEEY OF GOLD IN CALD70ENLi. 99 

year by the inhabitants, and sold to the Boston 
traders. This discovery created no particular 
excitement. The placer was supposed to have 
been worked out, and nothing more was thought 
of it. It is possible that the existence of other 
small placers may have been known. But pla- 
cer gold diggings were not, at this time, con- 
sidered of much importance in any portion 
of Spanish America. The inhabitants simply 
scratched over the surface, and washed or 
blew out the dirt in small wooden troughs 
or bowls called bateas. They knew nothing of 
bed-rock, or the natural tendency of loose gold 
to deposit itself thereon. 

It is true that common report says the 
Jesuit fathers who established the missions on 
the coast knew of the existence of gold in Cali- 
fornia in large quantities, and that they con- 
cealed their knowledge. I made this a sub- 
ject of special inquiry when in California, but 
nothing was elicited to sustain such a report. 
On the contrary, old native Californians told 
me that they never heard or believed any thing 
of the kind. No missions were ever established 
in those regions where the gold was found at 



100 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE ; OK, 

last, or in the interior valleys in California. 
They had no tradition in California, even among 
the Indians, respecting the existence there of 
the precious metals. General Sutter informed 
me that he had often asked the Indians to 
search for specimens of minerals. They would 
bring him blue, red, and white clay and colored 
stones, but never any thing indicating the pres- 
ence of gold or other metals. 

Hundreds of thousands of eager gold-seekers 
have overrun California, and prospected every 
nook and corner of the State. In working the 
mines, mountains have been tunnelled, hills torn 
down, valleys shafted, and rivers taken from 
their beds and carried long distances through 
other channels. The immense masses of earth 
displaced all over the mining regions afford an 
example of the tremendous energies of man 
thirsting for gold never equalled. Yet all this 
penetration of the earth and overthrow of its 
surface have failed to elicit a particle of evidence 
going to prove a preexisting knowledge of the 
fact that gold lay hidden in soil and rock, or 
that any thing in the shape of humanity above 
or different from the miserable Digger Indians 



THE DISCOVEEY OF GOLD IN CALIFOENIA. 101 

now found there, ever inhabited the country. 
Neither on the coast is there any evidence that 
the country was ever peopled by a different race 
of beings than such as were in occupation when 
Ave went there, 

California, with her fine climate, magnificent 
mountains, lovely hills and valleys, and bound- 
less wealth— California, so blessed by Nature, 
so well adapted to the development of the 
highest degree of perfection, mental and physi- 
cal, attainable by man, and destined to be the 
home of an advanced civilization, has remained 
from time immemorial a virgin land. In no 
country in the world has there been so little 
found to interest the antiquarian. During the 
unknown past this Queen of the Pacific has 
concealed her charms and her riches, to bestow 
them on the daring, energetic adventurers from 
over the mountains. 

The people of no state ever indulged in more 
extravagant predictions of its future greatness 
than did the Californians— especially those re- 
siding in San Francisco, for several years previ- 
ous to the. disco very of the gold-mines, as the 
columns of the Alta California, the diminutive 



102 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OK, 

journal of that day, will abundantly testify. 
But these extravagant predictions were not 
based, in any particular degree, on the supposed 
existence of any great quantity of the precious 
metals in the Territory. Other interests were 
the more prominent, and when the gold was 
discovered, the Californians were as much as- 
tonished as anybody else ; and on the first 
breaking out of the gold-fever in the Territory, 
San Francisco having been nearly depopulated 
thereby, one conservative and unbelieving citi- 
zen of the place expressed his views in the 
following communication to the Alta California 
of May 24, 1848: 

" I doubt, sir, if ever the sun shone upon 
such a farce as is now being enacted in Cali- 
fornia, though I fear it may prove a tragedy 
before the curtain drops. I consider it your 
duty, Mr. Editor, as a conservator of the public 
morals and welfare, to raise your voice against 
the thing. It is to be hoped that General Ma- 
son will dispatch the volunteers to the scene of 
action, and send these unfortunate people to 
their homes, and prevent others from going 
thither." 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 103 

From the foregoing historical facts, it ap- 
pears that neither in positive discovery, in- 
dication, or tradition, was there sufficient to 
establish the fact that gold would be found in 
California in paying quantities. The line harbor 
of San Francisco, so admirably located to com- 
mand the commerce of the North Pacific coast, 
and to open a trade of unlimited extent with 
the islands of the Pacific, and with the Asiatic 
shores ; the extensive agricultural districts of the 
Territory, and its immense capacity for stock- 
raising, fine climate, and the vague idea that 
some day large quantities of minerals might be 
found, constituted the chief attractions apper- 
taining to Upper California when it came into 
the possession of the United States. 

SUTTEE'S CONDITION IN 1848. 

Resuming the direct narrative of the discov- 
ery of gold at Sutter's Mill, early in 1848, we 
find that Captain Sutter was then the undisputed 
possessor of almost boundless tracts of land, in- 
cluding the former Russian possessions of Ross 
and Bodega, and the site of the present city of Sa- 



104 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE ; OR, 

cramento. He had performed all the conditions 
of his land-grants, built his fort, and completed 
many costly improvements. At an expense of 
$25,000, he had cnt a mill-race three miles long, 
and nearly finished a new flouring-mill. He 
had expended $10,000 in the erection of a saw- 
mill near Coloma; one thousand acres of virgin 
soil were laid down to wheat, promising a yield 
of forty thousand bushels; and extensive prepa- 
rations had been made for other crops. He 
owned eight thousand cattle, two thousand 
horses and mules, two thousand sheep, and one 
thousand swine. 

Captain Sutter raised the American flag on 
his fort July 11, 181:6. Subsequently Lieuten- 
ant Missroon, of the United States Navy, came 
up and organized a garrison for the fort, mostly 
of Sutter's own men — whites and Indians — and 
gave Sutter the command, which he held until 
peace was declared. He was also appointed 
alcalde of the district by Commodore Stockton, 
and Indian agent by General Kearney. 

Such w T as Captain Sutter's situation when 
the gold was discovered on his premises. Truly, 
he could say : 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 105 

"lam monarch of all I survey, 

My right there is none to dispute. 1 ' 

And here our pioneer lived like a baron of 
old, with his people, and his flocks and herds 
around him, untramelled by the conventionali- 
ties of artificial society, and undisturbed by the 
din and turmoil of compact civilization. 

Sutter's sympathies were with the United 
States, and his affiliations were with the citizens 
of the great Eepublic. In all his acts he mani- 
fested that love of liberty and of the republican 
form of government which characterizes his 
countrymen in so eminent a degree ; and all of 
Sutter's aspirations and efforts were to the end 
that, in some legitimate manner, California 
should be brought into the American Union. 

MARSHALL. 

But there is another pioneer, humble in ori- 
gin and pretensions, yet holding a prominent posi- 
tion in the discovery of gold in California. This 
is James W. Marshall, who emigrated from 
New Jersey to Oregon in 1843, and from Oregon 
to California in ISM. Here he engaged in farm- 



106 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OE, 

ing and stock-raising in a small way until the 
breaking ont of the Mexican War, when he en- 
listed in the California battalion under Fremont, 
served faithfully throughout his term of enlist- 
ment, and received an honorable discharge. 
Returning home, Marshall found his horses and 
cattle gone — some strayed and others stolen — 
and in order to obtain means to buy other stock 
and put his place to rights, he applied to Cap- 
tain Sutter for work. Marshall was then about 
thirty-eight years of age, unmarried, faithful, 
eccentric, and exceedingly stubborn. He ob- 
tained immediate employment from Captain Sut- 
ter, and proved an ingenious mechanic ; making 
himself quite useful in the construction of chairs, 
tables, and all those articles of household furni- 
ture so much needed in a new settlement. 



LOCATION OF THE SAW-MILL. 

Lumber was in great demand among the 
settlers of the Sacramento valley, their numbers 
having been considerably augmented by the ar- 
rival of Mormons and others from over the 
mountains. Marshall being a good judge of the 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD W CALIFORNIA. 107 

article, and otherwise competent to manage the 
enterprise, he was dispatched by Captain Sut- 
ter, with an Indian guide and interpreter, May, 
18:1:7, to the mountains to select the site for a 
saw-mill. Marshall returned and reported that 
he had found a good location on the south fork 
of the American River, forty miles east of the 
Fort, and at a point called by the Indians Cul- 
loo-ma, now called Coloma. The water-power 
was good, pine trees were plenty, and a Mexi- 
can cart could pass without difficulty between 
the fort and the proposed site of the saw-mill. 
Some delay occurred, and it was not until Au- 
gust, 1847, that Captain Sutter finally arranged 
with Marshall to superintend the erection and 
running of the saw-mill. 

DISCOVERY OF THE GOLD. 

The saw-mill was completed in January, 
1848, and they had just commenced sawing 
lumber when, on the night of February 2, 
1848, Marshall appeared at Sutter's Fort, his 
horse in a foam and himself presenting a singu- 
lar appearance — all bespattered with mud, and 



108 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

laboring under an extraordinary degree of ex- 
citement. He immediately requested Captain 
Sutter to go with him into a room where they 
could be alone. This request was granted, and 
after the door was closed, Marshall asked Cap- 
tain Sutter if he was sure they would not be 
disturbed, and desired that the door might be 
locked. Captain Sutter did not know what to 
make of his actions, and he began to think it 
hazardous to lock himself in the room with 
Marshal], who appeared so uncommonly strange. 
Marshall being satisfied at last that they 
would not be interrupted, took from his pocket 
a pouch from which he poured upon the table 
about an ounce of yellow grains of metal which 
he thought would prove to be gold. Captain 
Sutter inquired where he got it. Marshall stated 
that in the morning, the water being shut off 
from the saw-mill race, as was customary, he 
discovered, in passing through the race, shining 
particles here and there on the bottom. On ex- 
amination he found them to be of metallic sub- 
stance, and the thought flashed over him that 
they might be gold. How oig with events was 
ik Is point of time ! 




SIT T E R S S A W -MILL, (' L M A 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 100 

Marshall stated that the laborers — white and 
Indian — had picked up some of the particles, 
and he thought a large quantity could be col- 
lected. 

Captain Sutter was at first quite incredulous 
as to these particles being gold, but happening 
to have a bottle of nitric acid among his stores, 
he applied the test, and, true enough, the yellow 
grains proved to be pure gold. The great dis- 
covery was made ! 

View these men as they sit at the hour of 
midnight in the dimly lighted room of that 
adobe fort, located far up the Sacramento, the 
other side of the world to everybody but them- 
selves, isolated, all unknowing and unknown ; 
one an educated, polished gentleman from Eu- 
rope, the other a plain, honest mechanic from 
the United States. Regard them as they ex- 
amine those little yellow grains and learn that 
they are gold. The action of no king on his 
throne, no warrior at the head of his army, no 
statesman or legislative body that ever existed, 
was more conducive to events of the highest 
import to the human race, than was that of 
these two humble, private individuals, when 



110 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OK, 

they sat at the midnight hour, secluded and 
lonely, in that remote country, and discovered 
that they were handling gold. 

What a subject for the dramatist ! What a 
scene for the painter ! This was the denoue- 
ment of the plot in the drama Omnipotence was 
enacting in California. 

It must not be forgotten that another scene 
in this omnipotent drama was being enacted in 
the Mexican capital. On the very day, perhaps 
the very moment that Marshall discovered the 
grains of gold in Sutter's mill-race, the treaty 
that closed the Mexican War and gave us Cali- 
fornia, was signed in the city of Mexico ! 

The acquisition of California, and the dis- 
covery of gold, are events beyond the range of 
man's calculation in their influence on the des- 
tiny of the great American Republic. Though 
the occurrence of those two events on the same 
day is a startling coincidence, there is no mys- 
tery about it — nothing that need arouse the 
nonsense of superstition. Age by age we can 
clearly trace the footsteps of time coming down, 
period by period, with unerring precision, to 
those occurrences that have precipitated the 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. Ill 

United States onward in their course of empire 
with a bewildering rapidity. Columbus had 
discovered America, and the Spaniard had en- 
forced his bloody, soul-crushing Christianity 
from ocean to ocean, and from Terra del Fuego 
to the everglades of Florida, where Ponce de 
Leon searched for the waters of youth. A little 
more than two centuries after the landing of 
the Spaniard, the Anglo-Saxons appeared on 
the Atlantic shores of the northern portion of 
the continent, and one by one the colonies and 
peculiar institutions of the race were planted 
from Nova Scotia to the Mexican Gulf. Then 
the American Revolution gave birth to a new 
nation, which created a republic that soon ac- 
quired the Louisiana territory and Florida, and 
extended to the Pacific shore. The native races 
had thrown off the Spanish yoke, and republics 
skirted the Andes and Cordilleras, from Chili to 
California. Stephen Austin, of Connecticut, 
had obtained the consent of Mexico to colonize 
the Province of Texas with North Americans ; 
and these, bringing their slaves into the prov- 
ince, contrary to Mexican law, caused the be- 
ginning of trouble with Mexico, which resulted 



112 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

in the war that gave Texas her independence, 
which led to annexation to the United States. 
This brought on the war with Mexico, which 
resulted in peace and the acquisition of New 
Mexico and California, February 2, 1848. 

Now look at another class of events, tending 
directly to the same great end. Sutter, bom 
in 1803, the year in which we acquired the 
Louisiana territory, had emigrated from Europe 
and settled in the Missouri portion of that terri- 
tory. From thence, after five years' wandering 
in New Mexico, over the Rocky Mountains, 
through Oregon, to the Sandwich Islands, and 
the Russian possessions, he had located in the 
wild and isolated Sacramento valley, built his 
fort, subdued the country, established an exten- 
sive and flourishing colony; and all this occurred 
just in season to make the great discovery of 
gold, through the immediate instrumentality of 
Marshall — who had found his way there from 
New Jersey — at the opportune moment when 
the title of the territory passed into our hands, 
free from any complication that might have 
arisen out of the more timely action of the Eng- 
lish, the Mormons, or the raising of the Bear 
flag. 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 113 

This precise and harmonious working of 
events to one great end, is worthy of more than 
a passing notice. It may well excite the inter- 
est and wonder of the human mind. 

THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD BECOMES PUBLIC. 

We left Sutter and Marshall examining the 
particles of gold and discussing the circumstan- 
ces of the discovery. Marshall determined to 
return to the saw-mill — forty miles distant — 
that night, and he desired Captain Sutter to 
accompany him ; hut it was raining hard, and 
Captain Sutter concluded to remain till day- 
light. Marshall left immediately. In the morn- 
ing Captain Sutter started for the saw-mill, and 
when within ten miles of that locality, he saw 
something coming out of the bushes by the 
road-side, a short distance in advance. At first 
he thought it was a grizzly bear, but it proved 
to be Marshall v Sutter inquired what he was 
doing there. Marshall replied that he had been 
to the saw-mill, and in his impatience he had 
returned thus far to meet him. They went on 
together, and on reaching the mill-race the 



114 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

laborers were found busily occupied picking up 
particles of gold. 

After some examination, Captain Sutter be- 
came satisfied that gold in considerable quanti- 
ties would be found in that neighborhood ; and 
while the reflections of Marshall were probably 
confined to the idea of rapidly acquired wealth 
for himself, Captain Sutter realized at once how 
impossible it would be to hold his laborers to 
their work in carrying on his improvements, 
gathering his crops, and avoid being overrun 
by new-comers, should the gold prove abundant 
and the discovery be promulgated. He there- 
fore begged the laborers to say nothing about 
the gold for six weeks. His grist-mill and some 
other improvements would then be completed, 
and his crops all gathered. The laborers prom- 
ised to comply with his request, and Captain 
Sutter returned home on the 5th of February. 

But the great secret could not long be re- 
tained. A bottle of whiskey made it known. 
A teamster whom Captain Sutter had dispatched 
to the saw-mill with supplies, heard of the dis- 
covery of gold, and managed to obtain some of 
the precious grains. On returning to the fort 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 115 

he immediately went to the neighboring store, 
kept by a Mormon, and demanded a bottle of 
whiskey. This was a cash article in that coun- 
try, and as the teamster was poor pay, the trader 
refused to sell him the whiskey. The man de- 
clared he had plenty of money and exhibited 
some grains of gold. The astonished trader, on 
being satisfied that these were gold, gave his 
customer the bottle of whiskey, and earnestly 
inquired where he got the gold. The teamster 
refused to make known the secret till he had 
imbibed considerable of the liquor, when his 
tongue was loosened, and he told all about the 
discovery of gold at Sutter's saw-will. 

The wonderful tale spread like wild-fire 
throughout the sparsely inhabited Territory of 
California. It ran up and down the Pacific 
coast, traversed the continent, reached the At- 
lantic shores, and in a few months the story of 
California's golden treasures had startled the 
whole civilized world. 

Many inaccurate and incomplete statements 
relative to this great discovery have been put 
forth. It has been published that a little daugh- 
ter of Marshall first picked up pieces of gold in 



116 

the saw-mill race and carried them to her father. 
This statement is entirely incorrect, as Marshall 
never had a daughter. He was not married 
then, and he lives a bachelor to this day. 

It has also been published that a body of 
Mormons took out considerable gold on Mormon 
Island, Sacramento, in January, 1848. There 
is no truth in this statement. The diggings on 
Mormon Island were not discovered until some 
months after the discovery at Sutter's mill ; and 
in fact, nothing had occurred in any part of 
California to detract from the credit or renown 
of the discovery now accorded to Marshall, the 
employe of Sutter. 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE DISCOVERY TO 
MARSHALL. 

But something yet remains to be told. The 
history and the romance of the great event 
w T ould be incomplete should the two prominent 
figures in the foreground, Sutter and Marshall, 
be allowed to suddenly disappear, and their 
subsequent fortunes be consigned to oblivion. 

The story of Marshall is simple and touch- 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 117 

ing, as told by himself in documents which it is 
ray good fortune to possess. From one of these, 
written in August, 1864, in which lie sets forth 
his claim to a land-warrant, by virtue of his 
services in the Mexican War, I extract the fol- 
lowing, verbatim et literatim. The document is 
valuable as a history of the trials and tribula- 
tions of Marshall, and as affording some insight 
into the condition of affairs in that region, im- 
mediately following the discovery of gold. 

After speaking of building the saw-mill and 
discovering the gold, Marshall says : " We fin- 
ished the mill and sawed a little lumber, when 
the valley poured in its inhabitants, each bent 
on gold. Then came the gold-fever. We could 
not employ the hands to run the mill. Thirteen 
of Sutter & Marshall's oxen soon went down 
into the canons, thence down hungry men's 
throats. These cost $100 per yoke to replace. 
Seven of my horses went to carry weary men's 
packs. Sutter sold out to Bailey & Winter — 
we formed the firm of Bailey, Winter & Mar- 
shall, and before we could start the mill again, 
some white men murdered some Indians and 
ravished the squaws. The Indians retaliated, 



118 

killed the men. A mob raised and started to 
hunt Indians, but could not find them. Took 
a second trip and found our friendly Indians ; 
induced a part to come, telling them I wanted 
to talk to them ; brought them to Coloma ; 
picked out eight which were most friendly to 
me, and dismissed the others ; drank plenty of 
whiskey ; took out the eight Indians ; placed 
them in the direction of our work-hands, whites 
and Indians ; bid them run, commenced shoot- 
ing, killed seven of the eight prisoners and one 
of my work-hands, an Indian. The mob threat- 
ened me to such an extent that my few friends 
advised me to leave for a season. 

" Knowing the false manner that the Indians 
had been made to believe that I brought all 
the whites into the mountains, and had had 
their chief men murdered, I left until the mob 
dispersed, and the Indians could be made to 
know the truth. This was the commencement 
of my troubles. I will be brief with what re- 
mains. 

"I returned, found a smalltown upon my 
settlement. I objected to these proceedings and 
was answered by some, ' Ko one wants your 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 119 

ground more than a year, then the mines will 
be worked ont ; ' and by others, ' It is mineral 
land, you cannot preempt it, and we have as 
good a right to it as you.' I then could not 
believe that the circumstance of my finding gold 
was to deprive me of my rights of a settler and 
an American citizen, but such I soon found to 
be the case. I was soon forced to again leave 
Coloma for want of food. My property (that 
could be reached by a course of false litigation) 
was swept from me, and no one would give me 
employment. I have had to carry my pack of 
thirty or forty pounds over the mountains, liv- 
ing on China rice alone. If I sought employ- 
ment, I was refused on the reasoning that I had 
discovered the gold-mines, and should be the 
one to employ them; they did not wish the 
man that made the discovery under their con- 
trol. Again, should I commence mining upon 
old mining districts, I soon found some one 
claimed the ground, backed by a powerful mob 
who wanted to share the ground, believing that 
if I went to work there it was rich. 

" Should I go to new localities, and commence 
to open a new mine, before I could prospect the 



120 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE ; OE, 

ground numbers flocked in and commenced 
seeking all around me, and (as numbers tell) 
some one would find the lead before me and 
inform their party, and the ground was claimed ; 
then I would travel again. Thus I wandered 
for more than four years. In the spring of 
1857 I returned to Coloma, and was then able 
to get some work to do, such as digging gardens, 
sawing wood, clearing wells, etc. None would 
employ me at my trade to shove the plane and 
hand-saw. I next purchased some barren hills 
bordering on Coloma for fifteen dollars, and 
commenced planting a vineyard where I believe 
no one else would have attempted it, and I 
would not had I had the means to do better. 

" Having given you a short history of myself 
and surroundings, I now, in few words, will 
tell and answer why I no sooner applied for my 
bounty-lands, feeling myself under some fatal 
influence, a curse, or at least some bad circum- 
stances. I felt in my own mind that should I 
then call for my warrant, it would do me no 
good, and might be plucked from me. As these 
influences have gradually worn out, and now 
for some two years, since the fire of 1862, 1 find 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 121 

myself treated by those around me as they treat 
others, I have thought lit to apply for my 
land in hopes I may be able to raise the 
means to locate it in some healthy district, and 
by my labor procure me a couple of old nags to 
draw my plough (here I must do all by the 
spade), two or three cows, a few pigs and chick- 
ens, and end my few remaining days as com- 
fortably as possible, being now fifty-four years 
old, having earned my land by faithful service. 
I see no reason why the Government should give 
to others and not to me. In God's name, can 
the circumstance of my being the first to find 
the gold regions of California be a cause to de- 
prive me of every right pertaining to a citizen 
from under the flag ? Little did my great-grand- 
sire think that one of his descendants would 
have such feelings, when he set his name to the 
Articles of Independence (I mean the farmer 
from E"ew Jersey). 

" Hargraves from my advice returned to Aus- 
tralia, went into its mountains, and discovered 
gold, and was rewarded by being made wealthy 
by his government. I, who discovered gold in 
California, have been robbed of my all. How 

6 



122 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

different has been our fortunes! he can bless 
the nation under whose flag he was born ; should 
I curse mine % " 

The following is an extract from one of 
Marshall's letters to General Bidwell, of Califor- 
nia, on the occasion of his election to Congress : 

" I hereby congratulate you on your success. 
I hope you may be able to render some assist- 
ance to General Sutter ; he should be paid for 
losses sustained at breaking out of gold-fever. 
One thing appears to me remarkable, the perse- 
cution that has followed Sutter and myself, 
even when all was taken and we commenced 
making an effort to place ourselves in a com- 
fortable situation as circumstances would allow, 
still retaining our papers as testimony of the 
past ; the incendiary applies the torch to both 
our dwellings, all is destroyed. My cabin was 
destroyed in the fall of 1862, and all my papers 
went. Since then the persecution which fol- 
lowed me has in great measure ceased, and hope 
such will be the case with Sutter." 

The simple and homely expressions of Mar- 
shall afford much valuable information. He 
evidently believed that a curse or something of 



THE . DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 123 

an evil nature followed him for several years 
subsequent to the discovery of the gold. Mis- 
fortune was constantly in his path, and he suf- 
fered unjustly to the extent of his interest and 
enterprise, and though these were exceedingly 
limited as compared with Sutter's, they were 
every thing to him. 

Through the exertions of the Hon. John 
Bidwell, Marshall obtained his soldier's land- 
warrant, but he still lives on his little farm near 
Coloma, and devotes himself to the culture of 
the finer quality of grapes, in which he has had 
marked success. He is somewhat prominent as 
a member of the California Agricultural Soci- 
ety, and it is said that he has recently become 
a convert to spiritualism. 

Marshall is esteemed in his neighborhood as 
an honest, industrious, and good citizen, and 
there is every prospect that he will end his days 
in peace and comfort near the spot where, eight- 
een years ago, he discovered the gold. 



124: 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE DISCOVERY TO 
SUTTER. 

The consequences of the discovery of gold 
in California to the intelligent, large-hearted 
pioneer Sutter — him in whom centres the history 
of California for the last quarter of a century, 
cannot fail to be a matter of lively interest. 

Frontier pioneers are made up of several 
classes. Some flee from society to escape the 
penalty of their crimes, others wander forth to 
escape the restraints of well-regulated society, 
while others go from pure love of adventure ; 
and there are the unfortunate, the ruined, who 
seek to hide in the solitudes of Nature their 
mortification and their sorrows. But it is fair 
to presume that the mass of those who emigrate 
to new countries, to the wild frontier regions, 
are actuated by the spirit of enterprise, a desire 
to extend society and build up empire, believ- 
ing that they can more readily create a home 
and do better for themselves generally in a new 
country than in the crowded haunts of men. 
Occasionally there stands out from this class 
one who, in intellect, breadth of conception, en- 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 125 

ergy, courage, power to subjugate Nature, aud 
true nobility of soul, towers above them all. 
Such was John A. Sutter. 

This child of Nature, reared in the artificial 
society of Europe, was no reckless adventurer, 
seeking to escape the restraints of society, or to 
gratify an aimless love of roving and adventure. 
His whole history exhibits him as a man of 
broad, fixed, and intelligent purpose, and as 
pursuing this purpose with a single-mindedness 
seldom equalled. 

We have read how Sutter, when a young 
man, liberally educated, having means and 
holding a good position in the army of France, 
cast his eyes across the broad Atlantic, and re- 
solved to establish a colony of his countrymen — 
Swiss — on the frontiers of the United States, 
west of the Mississippi Eiver. We have read 
how he came over to this country as the pio- 
neer, and how at an early day his project was 
frustrated by disaster. With undaunted spirit 
and enlarged views, he conceives another plan — 
that of establishing a colony in the wilds of 
California. Several years are occupied in ad- 
venturous wandering, to reach the locality of 



126 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

his choice — that terra incognita, unexplored and 
unknown even to the intelligent inhabitants of 
the Territory of California. Once located, we 
find him casting his lot almost alone among the 
wild and barbarous tribes of Indians. Then we 
see him building a substantial fort on strictly 
military principles, mounting cannon, and bring- 
ing whites and savages under military disci- 
plin. In a few years we find that he has sub- 
jugated the country around him, making friends 
of the wild and barbarous tribes of Indians, who 
at first were his fiercest enemies ; and all this 
was accomplished, not more by his military 
tactics and resources, than by his powers of 
mind and attractive personal qualities in dealing 
with the rough, uncultivated whites and the wild 
children of Nature. "Where once was found only 
the solitude, the silence, the desolation of isolated 
and unknown wilds, and where were heard the 
whoop and yell of savages, or the howl of wild 
beasts, there arose the habitations of civilized 
man. The ringing of the anvil, the sound of 
the hammer, the saw, and the plane, and the 
song of the husbandman, were heard. Broad 
fields teemed with the fruits of the earth, the 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 127 

plains were clotted with lowing herds, and peace 
and prosperity rested over the valley of the 
Sacramento. 

The fame of this charming country and of 
its successful development by Sutter spread far 
and wide, and bands of emigrants began to 
turn their steps thither ; and when any of these 
arrived, poor and destitute, their wants were 
bountifully and gratuitously supplied by the 
unselfish Sutter. It is such as Sutter who are 
the real founders of empire. 

Even had there been no gold in California 
to discover, Sutter's enterprise would have for- 
ever stood out as the best conceived and most 
extensively successful instance of pioneering to 
be found in American history. But when it is 
connected with the fortuitous circumstances of 
the time, and the fact that it was through the 
direct agency of Sutter's enterprise that the 
gold was ultimately discovered, some years, 
doubtless, before it otherwise would have been, 
and that Sutter subjugated and partially peopled 
the country, by which the results of the great 
discovery were immensely hastened, it gives to 
the hero of the story a fame that can only be 
forgotten with the event itself. 



128 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

At the time of the discovery of gold in Cali- 
fornia, February, 1848, it will be remembered 
that General Sutter was in peaceful and undis- 
puted possession of immense tracts of land, of 
broad fields of growing crops, of a valuable 
military fort, of houses, shops, mills, and other 
improvements, and almost countless cattle, hor- 
ses, sheep, and swine. He was the military 
commander of the district, and Indian agent of 
the territory. Eespected and honored by all, 
General Sutter was the great man of the coun- 
try. What is General Sutter's condition now ? 
Let the following brief statement of facts an- 
swer : 

A week after Sutter's return from the saw- 
mill to the fort, February 5, 1848, the news of 
the discovery of the gold was generally known 
in that region, and, in consequence, he was im- 
mediately deserted by all his mechanics and la- 
borers — white, Kanaka, and Indian. The mills 
were abandoned, and became a dead loss. Labor 
could not be hired to plant, to mature the crops, 
or reap and gather the grain that ripened. 

At an early period subsequent to the dis- 
covery, an immense emigration from overland 



THE DISCOVERT OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 129 

poured into the Sacramento Yalley, making Sut- 
ter's domains their camping-ground, without the 
least regard for the rights of property. They 
occupied his cultivated fields, and squatted all 
over his available lands, saying they were the 
unappropriated domain of the United States, to 
which they had as good a right as any one. 
They stole and drove off his horses and mules, 
and exchanged or sold them in other parts of 
the country ; they butchered his cattle, sheep, 
and hogs, and sold the meat. One party of 
five men, during the flood of 1849-'50, when 
the cattle were surrounded by water near the 
Sacramento Kiver, killed and sold $60,000 
worth of these — as it was estimated — and left 
for the States. By the first of January, 1852, 
the so-called settlers, under pretence of preemp- 
tion claims, had appropriated all Sutter's lands 
capable of settlement or appropriation, and they 
had stolen all his horses, mules, cattle, sheep, 
and hogs, except a small portion used and sold 
by himself. 

There was no law to prevent this stupendous 
robbery; but when the law was established, 
there came lawyers with it to advocate the 



130 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OR, 

squatters' pretensions, although there were none 
from any part of Christendom who had not 
heard of Slitter's grants, the peaceful and just 
possession of which he had enjoyed for ten 
years, and his improvements were visible to all. 

Sutter's efforts to maintain his rights, and 
save even enough of his property to give him 
an economical and comfortable living, constitute 
a sad history, one that would of itself fill a vol- 
ume of painful interest. In these efforts he be- 
came involved in continuous and expensive liti- 
gation, which was not terminated till the final 
decision of the Supreme Court, in 1858-'59, a 
period of ten years. 

When the United States Court of Land Com- 
missioners was organized in California, Sutter's 
grants came up in due course for confirmation. 
These were the grant of eleven leagues, known 
as New Helvetia, and the grant of twenty-two 
leagues, known as the Sobrante. 

The land commissioners found these grants 
perfect. Not a flaw or defect could be discoverd 
in either of them, and they were confirmed by 
the board, under the provisions of the treaty of 
Guadalupe Hidalgo. 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 131 

The squatter interest then appealed to the 
United States District Court for the Northern 
District of California. This court confirmed 
the decision of the land commissioners. Ex- 
traordinary as it may appear, the squatter inter- 
est then appealed both cases to the Supreme 
Court of the United States, at Washington, 
and still more extraordinary to relate, that 
court, though it confirmed the eleven-league 
grant, decided that of the Sobrante — twenty-two 
leagues — in favor of the squatters. The court 
acknowledged that the grant was a " genuine 
and meritorious " one, and then decided in favor 
of the squatter interest on purely technical 
grounds, and Sutter's ruin was complete. This 
is one of the most singular cases of law versus 
justice that can be found in the annals of juris- 
prudence ; and it shows very clearly that the 
science of law, as yet, is not, in reality, regu- 
lated by any standard above that which the low 
and selfish instincts of man have established. 

The method of Sutter's ruin may be thus 
stated. He had been subjected to a very great 
outlay of money in the maintenance of his title, 
the occupancy and the improvement of the 
grant of New Helvetia. 



132 THE ROMANCE OF THE AGE; OK, 

From a mass of interesting documents which 
I have been permitted to examine, I obtained 
the following statement relative to the expenses 
incurred on that grant : 

Expenses in money, and services, which formed 

the original consideration of the grant, . $50,000 

Surveys and taxes on the same, . . . 50,000 

Cost of litigation extending through ten years, 
including fees to eminent counsel, witness 
fees, travelling expenses, etc., . . . 125,000 

Amount paid out to make good the covenants 
of deeds upon the grant, over and above 
what was received from sales, . . . 100,000 



$325,000 



In addition, General Sutter had given titles 
to much of the Sobrante grant, under deeds of 
general warranty, which, after the decision of 
the Supreme Court of the United States in favor 
of the squatter interest, Sutter was obliged to 
make good, at an immense sacrifice, out of the 
New Helvetia grant ; so that the confirmation 
of his title to this grant was, comparatively, of 
little advantage to him. Thus Sutter lost all 
his landed estate. 

But amid the wreck and ruin that came 



THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 133 

upon him in cumulative degree from year to 
year, Sutter managed to save, for a period, what 
is known as Hock farm, a very extensive and val- 
uable estate on the Feather River. This estate 
he proposed to secure as a resting-place in his 
old age, and for the separate benefit of his wife 
and children, whom he had brought from Swit- 
zerland in 1852, having been separated from 
them eighteen years. Sutter's titles being gen- 
erally discredited, his vast flocks and herds 
having dwindled to a few head, and his resources 
all gone, he was no longer able to hire labor to 
work the farm ; and as a final catastrophe, the 
farm mansion was totally destroyed by fire in 
1865, and with it all General Sutter's valuable 
records of his pioneer life. 

As difficulties augmented, Sutter was obliged 
to trench on Hock Farm for the means of sub- 
sistence. His wife united with him in mortgage 
after mortgage on the farm, every foot of which, 
save one small piece, has long since been sold 
by the sheriff. That small piece is now at the 
mercy of the last mortgagee, and Sutter, with 
his family — he who, if allowed his rights, could 
buy out a Rothschild, an Astor, or a Stewart — 



134 

is absolutely a wanderer on the face of the earth, 
without a home or resting-place. 

What a sad termination of a useful, noble, 
grand life — a life, the progressive results of which 
are felt, in a revolutionary degree, to the ends 
of the earth. The mind of man never con- 
ceived a fiction so strange as the truth of the 
story contained in this little book. The wildest 
dreams of the romancer never equalled the 
reality of this great romance of the age. 

It seems incredible that the rich and great 
State of California, the generous instincts and 
liberal views of whose people never allow them 
to do any thing of a patriotic, honorable, and 
just character, on a small scale, can see their 
great pioneer pass from earth, unknown, un- 
honored, and in want; and it is still more in- 
credible that the American nation can suffer so 
foul a blot on its escutcheon, as would be the 
historical fact, that the sun which illumined a 
life so genial and good — a life that has yielded, 
through hardship, toil, and courageous expo- 
sure, such immense national benefit — was per- 
mitted to go down in penury, sorrow, and 
gloom. 



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H 88 78 



